Rescue Flare
by lazarov
Summary: In which Matt Murdock dismantles a child trafficking ring while trying not to starve himself to death. (Warnings for: eating disorders, CSA.)
1. Chapter 1

A full belly does not make for a chaste spirit.

 **Saint Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue.**

* * *

It's an old game he and Stick used to play. Maybe not a game: a test.

"Tell me what you taste."

Stick'd bought him an ice cream, first. But the game quickly expanded, from plain white rice (so much hiding in something so simple) to jerk chicken from Restaurant Row (Stick would make him pick out every last spice, in order of volume, then list their origins). Every wrong answer meant a swift smack on the shoulder or a jab behind the knee.

If he omitted an ingredient he'd have to keep eating until he got them all - even if he'd already identified after a tiny bite, say, the soiled band-aid the short-order cook had dropped in the chili and left to stew all day.

"Accuracy is _important_ ," Stick would proclaim, tapping his fingers on the table.

Even now, decades later, Matt can almost hear it when he eats: a repetitive staccato through every mouthful of chicken cacciatore or fish and chips or street-vendor shawarma.

 _Taptaptaptap._

* * *

The girl's cries resonate through the alley behind the office, bouncing off the brick walls and slipping through the slats of the metal fire escapes before they reach his ears. Matt freezes, one hand wrapped around a half-drunk beer, and listens, his neck craned ever-so-slightly. He tries to pinpoint the source, maybe three blocks away?, and the girl's whimpers have faded to the point where he can't quite…

 _SLAP. The heavy sound of knuckles connecting with jawbone and the girl cries out again, louder, before cupping a hand over her mouth to try and muffle her own sobs. She sounds young, her voice too thin and high to be any older than thirteen or fourteen._

"Matt?" Karen asks expectantly, touching his knee.

"Huh?" He whips his head towards her, realizing she's probably just asked him something. "What's up?" He tries to split his attention, one ear still focused half-a-mile away.

 _Stop crying. A man's voice, deep and harsh - pack-a-day smoker's rasp to it. Between the weight of that slap and his voice, he sounds big. The girl responds with silence. Did you take his wallet? The man asks. Answer me. You know that's not how we do business around here. She doesn't say anything, and another slap rings out._

"I said, I missed this," she repeats. "The three of us." She's flushed, the whiskey making her cheeks and the tips of her ears bright and hot. It always happens when she drinks and she gets so embarrassed - and of course Foggy can never help but point it out, which always makes her go even redder.

 _Pleasemisterdidntdoitiswearplease, she's begging the man, didntakenothingiswearplease. Matt can't tell if her words are slurred because she's talking so fast or because she's just caught two blows to the mouth or because somebody's drugged her up to make her more compliant._

"Cheers to that," Foggy agrees, raising his glass. "To Nelson and Murdock and Page, reunited and it feels so good - we need a better trio moniker than that, don't you think? The Crime Busting Trio. The World Changing Champions. Two avocados and their spicy friend-slash-secretary... we're Guacamole!"

"You're drunk," Karen laughs, smacking him on the arm. "But thanks for trying to include me."

 _Quiet, the man tells her. Then, speaking to someone else - maybe over the phone?: We'll get you another girl. We've got lots of young ones - better than this one. We'll make this right, I deeply apologize for the inconvenience tonight's events have caused._

"I need to do something real fast," Matt says quickly, shooting Foggy a look. "Half an hour, tops."

"Do something," Foggy echoes, confused for a second, before he huffs. " _Oh._ Come on, Matt, seriously? Tonight?"

"I'm missing something," Karen says, looking between them. "Am I missing something? Are you two still doing the whole keep-Karen-out-of-the-loop thing again, cause-"

 _The man's phone rings and he answers it: Hello? Yeah, it's been dealt with. Yeah. Yeah, trust me, won't happen again after I'm done with her. Make sure the other girls hear about it, too._

"You're almost out of whiskey, I'm gonna pick up more booze - tequila, you like tequila, right Karen? Tequila's for celebrating," he babbles, setting his beer down with a practiced I-don't-quite-know-where-the-table-is-oh-there-it-is. It feels weird to put on the show in front of Foggy - whenever he does it, he can sense the look Foggy shoots him. The 'you know very well where the table is, Matt Murdock' look.

"We still have some beer," Karen says brightly.

His excuse, he knows, is incredibly thin but he's not sure he can think of anything better with the girl's cries ringing in his head. Pleadingly, Matt furrows his brow - _come on, Foggy. Give me an out, here._

"Alright," Foggy sighs, playing along. "Okay. Bring us some damn tequila, but _be careful_ , alright?"

"Going to the liquor store isn't that dangerous, Foggy," Karen laughs. "Just don't leave us drinking by ourselves for too long!"

"You'd be surprised," Foggy grumbles.

"I won't," Matt promises.

* * *

There isn't time to grab the devil-suit from his apartment - he's barely maintaining his grasp on their voices, their breathing, and he doesn't want to risk losing their location entirely. So he takes off at a full sprint, suit jacket and dress pants, weaving through alleys and across traffic until he's standing under the right building.

He has his blindfold in his breast pocket for emergencies, at least - more of a security blanket, than anything - and he pulls it on while he forms a game plan.

"You gonna do that again?" The man growls, clear as day. Third window up, second from the left. No fire escape access, but enough window ledges and exposed pipe that it shouldn't matter. "Didn't think so," the man continues, and Matt can just about hear his smirk.

Matt could swear he can almost hear the surprise on the man's face, too, when he kicks the window in.

"Who the _fuck_ are -"

A well-timed dress shoe to the teeth knocks out three of his molars and he doesn't get to finish, just hits the ground flat on his ass, meaty and heavy. Quickly, Matt takes a second to listen hard: no incoming footsteps, no quickening heartbeats heading his way. All clear.

The guy's trying to push himself up - he's as big as Matt had guessed, easily two-eighty and well over six feet. Matt kicks him in the ribs before he can get any leverage, four times, _hard_ , and then launches himself onto the man's face, _one two three_ punches to the throat, nose, jaw. The guy stops moving, and Matt takes a second to catch his breath leaned on top of the gigantic goon. He can hear the guy's heart beating and is sort of relieved, but he also knows that deep down he wasn't that worried about it.

The other heartbeat in the room is stuck at a rabbitlike pace and he pulls himself off the thug, looks towards her.

"Hey, hey," he says softly. "Sorry about - that."

She just stares at him, hyperventilating, and he realizes he was right. Thirteen or fourteen. Gangly and skinny and he can smell the cheap lipgloss on her, just over the reek of liquor and latex hovering in the room. He tries to force the smell from his nose, shaking his head and exhaling hard like a spooked horse.

"It sounded like," he begins carefully, frozen in place halfway across the room. He stays crouched down, hands held out towards her non-threateningly. "It sounded like you needed help."

"I was just trying to get home," she says after a moment, shaky and slurred and frantic. "Just trying to get on a bus and go home. I can't call my mom, she'd be so… So I took his wallet - I didn't think he'd notice til after, and then maybe I could've, I could've -"

She cups a hand over her mouth and sobs quietly - a learned sort of quiet. "Is he dead?" she asks, muffled and barely audible.

"No." He tries not to say it too regretfully. "What's your name?"

He gives her a while to answer, just stays crouched in place, one ear focused on the man in case he tries to shake himself off for round two. He doesn't want to move towards her, doesn't want to risk scaring her any worse (though he's certainly already done his share, between his dramatic entrance and the mask covering half his face).

"Pixie," she chokes out, barely more than a whisper.

It's an obvious street name - she probably wouldn't have told him otherwise. Doesn't matter. Matt takes a deep breath.

"Runaway?" he asks quietly.

He can sense her nodding.

"And who's he?" Matt prods the big guy with his foot.

"I don't know his name," the girl says quietly. Carefully, kicking away a couple of pieces of glass, she sits down on the floor and covers her face with her hands. The shock is wearing off and Matt can sense she's exhausted. She explains: "He's just in charge of driving us around and waiting outside til the guys are done."

Matt feels his fists clench and unclench, blood pounding in his ears. It's all he can do to ask without raising his voice: "And who's in charge of him?"

She touches a hand to her busted lip and winces, hissing softly. Her tears have stopped almost entirely now. "Mikey," she says firmly. "All of us - no, most of us - we ran away from home and we ended up with Mikey."

He exhales and shuts everything down - shuts out the noises on the street, the vibrations of the subway, the smell ( _god, the smell_ ) in the room. He forces them out of his head and focuses on her alone.

"Mikey who, Pixie?"


	2. Chapter 2

She tells him everything she knows and they sit in silence for a while, until she speaks up and warns him they'd better go before the other guys come looking.

"This is one of Mikey's places," she explains.

He tries to take her to hospital but she argues with him ("I'm okay, my lip's been busted worse before." "I'm not just talking about your lip, Pixie, come on."), and he doesn't think he can drag her kicking and screaming without drawing the wrong kind of attention. So he backs down and hands her the goon's phone, tells her to call her mom.

While she's on the phone - whispers turning into crying turning into apologies and _I-miss-yous_ \- he digs around and finds a wad of bills in the guy's pocket (along with ID, some extra condoms and couple folds of heroin - charming).

It's enough cash for her very expensive ride back to Cherry Hill, at least.

"Are you gonna get him?" she asks as they wait for the cab to pull up.

The henchman on the floor behind them takes a crackling, wheezing breath, but Matt can tell without moving muscle that he's still out cold.

"I'm gonna try," he says quietly. It's a promise, and he hopes she believes him. They've both got their elbows leaned up on the sill of the open window (the one he _didn't_ dramatically smash through) and from this distance, three inches away from her, he can smell the middle-aged men on her skin and he wants to turn around and smash the guy's face until he's nothing but cartilage and pulp.

She pulls out a crumpled cigarette pack and goes to light one but he gently yanks the lighter out of her hand and pockets it.

"Don't," he admonishes.

She asks, "Are you a police officer?"

"Not exactly," he says. He pulls his mask slightly further down his nose.

"Are you gonna tell my mom? About all this."

"No," he says, shaking his head regretfully. "But you should."

"She'll be so mad," she says, rubbing her eyes. Her voice breaks a little. "I'm so stupid."

He wants so badly to put his hand on her shoulder, but he knows that's probably the worst thing he could do. So he tries to find his words.

"No, Pixie." He sticks with a safe cliché, but he means it: "Nothing - _nothing_ that happened is your fault. You need to know that, okay? And when you get home, you need to tell your mom, get her to take you to the police. The hospital. Get her to get you some help."

She sighs and nods but doesn't respond, just mouths to herself _I'm not a baby_. He probably wouldn't have heard it if he didn't have his senses on overdrive, and he immediately wants to grab her by her tiny shoulders and shake her and hold her and explain to her _exactly_ how delicate she is, she has _no idea how delicate she is_ , how quickly she could just be in a _ditch somewhere_ , but he doesn't.

They just stare out at the city together in silence and, after a while, the cab stops in front of the building, its old brakes hissing to a stop.

"Time to go," he says, nodding towards the Crown Vic below them and she stands up straight, wiping the windowsill dust from her shirt (which, from the smell of it, is soaked with blood from her lip or her nose and he prays it's dark enough that the cabbie won't notice). "Take care of yourself, Pixie."

"It's Amanda," she tells him, and he can tell she's being truthful. The cab honks a warning at them. "Thanks, mask guy," she says, waving a tentative goodbye. "Get everyone else out, too, okay?"

Matt nods and crosses his heart, watches her go.

He stays in the shadows of the filthy apartment until her cab turns the corner, towards the Hudson, whisking her down into the Lincoln Tunnel and out of Hell's Kitchen.

* * *

It's seven-fifteen and Matt tries to ignore the banging on his door but Foggy's too insistent .

"Late night last night, sleepyhead?" Foggy asks, crossing the threshold without waiting for an invitation. Matt steps aside automatically to let him in. "The hell happened to you, man?"

"Uh," Matt wipes the sleep from his eyes, not sure how to answer. Banter seems like the easiest way to tap the brakes on the fight that's about to happen: "I got lost on the way to the liquor store? Good morning."

"Sure you did. Vigilante stuff again, right?" Foggy's unimpressed - borderline pissy, actually. It's not a good look on him.

"I'm sorry," Matt offers sincerely, closing the door and following Foggy inside. "I didn't mean to run off on you guys like that. I just couldn't ignore this one."

"What, some tourist getting his wallet stolen on Broadway?"

"Ah, not so much." Matt sighs and collapses on the couch. He runs his hands over his face, over his stubbled jaw and almost-faded bruises. Exhausted and a little defeated. "It's bad, Foggy. Child-trafficking ring, looks like."

He can't help but wince as he says it.

"Oh," Foggy sighs, frowning. It's clearly not what he was expecting, and his annoyance falters before disappearing completely. "That's… that's rough. What happened?"

"Low-level henchman beating up a fourteen-year-old girl for trying to run away."

He can still smell the sex and latex and the cloying, fruity perfume hanging in the air in that shitty apartment and he notices his hands have started to vibrate. Strange, he thinks, clenching and unclenching his fingers. He didn't take a single punch but the night was tougher on him than he'd thought.

"And…" Foggy prompts Matt to continue, standing over him and studying his face.

"And I kicked his teeth in and sent her in a cab back home to New Jersey. Nothing else I could do. But I have names, now. And an address." He tries to keep his expression unreadable.

"Dude," Foggy shakes his head. He squeezes in at the end of the couch and Matt pulls his feet up to give him room. "That great and all that you saved that little girl, but that's the kind of stuff you hand over to the _police_ , you know? They can handle it, it's what they're there for."

Matt shakes his head stubbornly. "You know I know that, Foggy, I already reported it. Right away when I got home. But if I leave it at that, it'll just get added to the backlog and you and I both know this can't wait. Those kids can't wait."

"How do you know there's more?"

"The girl told me. Amanda. She told me they're kept in little rooms - _cages_ , practically," he spits the word out like a bad taste in his mouth. "They round up street kids, runaways, and rent them out. Bastards."

His words hang in the air for a while, and they both shift uncomfortably.

"Alright, well. Then I guess we'd better get to work on this one," Foggy says, after a minute, likely because he doesn't know what else to say and he knows he won't win the argument otherwise. "Let's start with coffee?"

"Yeah, coffee'd be good," Matt nods. He feels hungover, almost - like the morning after you make the mistake of mixing whiskey with wine with something sugary-sweet and potent and you wake up with a low, insistent throb at the base of your skull.

"Okay." Foggy stands back up, suddenly all business, the couch shifting as his weight lifts. "That means get yourself dressed and come on over to the office, where _Karen's already made some_. You know I can't make coffee worth a damn, Murdock."


	3. Chapter 3

Barely a drop hits his tongue before Matt yanks his head back, a reflexive jerk, splashing his coffee down the front of his shirt and knocking his cane over. The sharp, burnt taste is overwhelming and he tries his best to swallow it down before he starts to gag.

"Damn it," Matt hisses. He can already feel the heat creeping into his cheeks, and he swears again, frustrated. Karen jumps forward, picking his cane off the floor and leaning back against the table, then moves to help him clean himself up but he waves her off.

"I got it," he sighs, feeling around for a napkin before patting himself dry. He tries his best to hide his split knuckles from her gaze - he'd caught the guy's teeth last night, just a love bite on the knuckle of his index finger, and from the slight swelling he figures he's probably got an infection coming on. "How long has that coffee been brewing, Karen?"

"Sorry, it's a little burnt, huh?" She admits, wrinkling her nose and whisking his coffee away to dump it down the sink. He can smell her as she leans over him to grab the mug, tuberose and jasmine, and it cleanses his palate a little. Even the darkness of the musk lying low in her perfume - a dirty kind of scent in and of itself - helps push the taste out his throat.

"A little burnt," he agrees gently, shooting her a crooked smile.

Karen's coffee is usually endearingly bad but he already knows that isn't what this is. This is something else entirely: familiar and unwelcome.

"I'll make you some tea instead," she offers apologetically, over the sound of water rushing into the kettle. She sets it on the sideboard and flicks it on, then hums softly to herself as she rinses his mug clean.

He should have felt it earlier, bubbling in his brain and at the back of his throat. He's been due for an episode - honestly, he's shocked it's taken this long for him to glitch out considering all that's happened with Fisk, all the horror they've already been through in the last -

"You jumpy today, Matt?" She asks, interrupting his thoughts. "Rough night?" She asks carefully, setting his mug back down, this time full of piping hot ceylon tea.

"Do I seem jumpy?" He shoots back noncommittally, tossing the damp napkin down onto their cheap conference table with an annoyed flick of the wrist.

"Maybe," she shrugs. "Guess not. You sure gave us a spook when you disappeared last night, you know?"

"I know," he nods, apologetic. "Sorry. Things came up."

"As they often do," she agrees vaguely, and he can tell she's eyeing him.

"I'm working on something," Matt says, changing the subject. "And I could use your help. I need blueprints, old building permits, inspections - anything you can find."

"What for?" she asks brightly, and he can tell already tell she's game.

"Might have a zoning case in the works," Matt explains, and he knows it's obnoxiously vague but she immediately slides a pad and pen in front of him.

"Zoning?" She asks, confusion in her voice, and he's worried he's going to have to pull something out of his ass but she just snorts a laugh. "Jesus, Matt, you and Foggy are scraping the bottom of the barrel to keep the lights on, huh?"

"Well, I don't really need the lights on, either way," he smiles weakly. She laughs at his bad joke, which is generous of her, and he barely has time to scribble down the address of the apartment building before she whisks it away and heads off to start her investigation, no more questions asked.

The best damn secretary in the city, that one.

There's nothing else for him to do except try to keep himself busy and keep up appearances - he has a few hours to burn before he can scope out the address Amanda had given him. ("Don't go around noon - the men like to make appointments around noon. On their lunch hours, you know?" His stomach turns all over again at the thought.)

So he spends a couple of hours with his head down, trying to get some work done in spite of the fact that his heart couldn't be in it any less than it already is. Marci was charitable enough to send them over a some referrals, a few cases deemed too low-level for the firm (code for _these people barely have two nickels to rub together, so go ahead and take them off our hands_ ) and he goes through them one by one, zipping through the details on the braille display hooked up to his PC.

 _Grand larceny under $3000. Stealing from the shoe department in Saks. Boring._

 _DUI case. Ran a red light and curbed their car - no injuries, all caught on camera. Who gets a DUI in New York City?_

 _B &E, mischief to property, domestic violence, credit card fraud._ All of them so, so obviously guilty and he doesn't have the patience or energy for any of it. He can't force himself to care about any of these cases - not when all of his thoughts are singularly focused on the most important job awaiting him once the sun sets. He rests his elbows on the table and rests his forehead in his hands, fingers threading through his hair. Frustrated. He takes a deep breath, tilts his head just the right way, and the burnt coffee smell on his shirt wafts up his nose, so strong he can almost taste it all over again, and his throat spasms, nearly a gag.

 _No. No, no, no. This is not the time. Not now._

"I'm gonna take lunch a little early," he announces as casually as he can manage, easing out of his seat and grabbing his cane. A lot early, he realizes as he slides his glasses on - it can't be any later than what, ten thirty? - but Karen doesn't seem to notice. She just offers a goodbye without looking up from her computer screen, completely absorbed by her research.

* * *

 _He knows what this is. This isn't new._

* * *

Matt leaves the office and heads straight down the road, following his nose to the nearest burger joint and orders a double cheeseburger, extra pickles and no ketchup. Carries it home, one hand holding his cane and the other with the burger held out in front of him alone in its grease-stained paper bag like it's a biohazard.

" _Foggy. Foggy. Foggy._ "

His phone drones at him, halfway home, and he transfers the bag under his arm so he can swipe the screen and accept the call.

"Where were you? I got to the office twenty minutes after you left my place and you weren't there." Matt's too on-edge to bother with pleasantries.

"Running errands, dude. I may have started with some before-work errands named Marci - well, you know. Heading back to the neighbourhood now, I'm gonna talk to Brett, see if he can speed things along at the precinct for your -"

"No," Matt orders vehemently, before lowering his voice and ducking into a boarded up entranceway. "What are you going to tell him? A little birdy whispered in your ear and told you there's a bunch of thugs running a child trafficking ring in Hell's Kitchen? How are you going to explain that?"

"Your anonymous report isn't going to be enough to send cops charging into some evil lair somewhere, you've got to -"

"That's exactly my point, Foggy." Matt cuts him off again, earning an annoyed huff from Foggy's end of the line. "It's not enough, that's why tonight I'm going to go in and take care of it as quickly and cleanly as possible. Before they know what hit them."

"No, that's _my point_ , Matt. You're not going charging into this place by yourself, playing hero and risking getting yourself killed when you could just _let the cops do their jobs._ "

"They'll be there, too - I just have to get there _first._ If the cops pull up with their sirens blaring and guns drawn kids are going to get _hurt_ , and don't think for a second those bastards would risk letting kids get away and potentially incriminating their _clients._ " He spits the word out, readjusting his phone. The heat and smell of the burger in the crook of his elbow makes his stomach do a nervous backflip and he takes a gulp of city air to try and refocus.

"Dude," Foggy says softly. He sighs into the phone. "I know… I know this is personal for you." He lowers his voice, a half-whisper, and Matt isn't sure if it's because he's in a public place or because he's uncomfortable broaching the topic. "You told me about that little girl that you saved from her dad - and, I'm not trying to read into anything, I just know you had it tough growing up. I don't think I'm wrong in saying hurt kids are kind of an old wound for you, you know?"

Matt chews at the inside of his cheek and takes a shaky breath, runs his hand over his face. "Yeah. I dunno. Yeah, maybe."

"Just… I can't see you get hurt, okay?"

"Yeah," Matt says quietly, and it's almost a promise. "Hey," he adds, clearing his throat, "When you get back to the office, do me a favour and tell Karen I'm taking the rest of the day off, okay? Tell her I have food poisoning or something, I don't know. I've got her working on some research for me, I told her we took a zoning case -"

"A _zoning_ case? Jeez, Matt, you're really tarnishing the bad-ass defence lawyer brand we're trying to build here."

"Yeah, yeah, sorry," Matt says, a hint of a smile at the corner of his lips. He continues: "She doesn't know it, but she's looking into the head honcho's building for me. Play along, and don't let her get too curious, okay? We're not - I'm not - dragging her into any trouble on this one."

"I won't blow your cover, man," Foggy sighs, begrudgingly but with an inevitable tinge of affection. He sounds like he means it, at least.

* * *

Matt gets home, sits down at his couch and places the takeout bag on the coffee table, all-business. After a moment's consideration, he pulls the foil-wrapped burger out of the bag and sets it down gingerly, like he's serving filet mignon.

And then he stares it down, arms crossed, like he can intimidate it into being edible.

A moment from his childhood flashes through his head - " _This is not lunch, Matt. This is a test. Show me you're worth my time._ " - and he shakes his head sharply, trying to shake Stick free of his thoughts.

He knows meditation will help - it's one of the few steps he can take to work against the tide of his own senses, but he isn't ready to give in and sit on the floor and cross his legs just yet. Because, for all he knows, the coffee was a one-off. He could be making a mountain out of a molehill, a big dramatic song and dance about nothing. He takes ten deep breaths, steeling himself, and he realizes that the smell isn't turning his stomach. It smells like a cheeseburger, nothing more. _This is normal. You're fine._

 _You don't have the luxury right now of being anything other than normal and fine._

Concentrating, he focuses on the sound of his neighbour walking around in stilettos, the sound of a bottle breaking in an alley three blocks away. Turns up his other senses to try and distract from his sense of taste.

Pushing himself forward, he unwraps the burger and takes a bite before he can psyche himself out. He swallows just as quickly, nearly choking after only chewing twice, getting it down before his brain can begin to scream at him. And… nothing. It tastes like a cheeseburger.

 _COW'S BLOOD NICOTINE RESIDUE OLD GREASE MOLD PARTICLES_

It hits him like a freight train, tongue on fire and bile rising in his throat, and he barely makes it to the sink before he vomits, his esophagus squeezing and pushing and straining to get every last piece out. He turns on the faucet and, sweat coating his forehead, listens to the stream hitting the bottom of the sink, washing away the filth.

Leaning there, pathetic and overwhelmed, Matt can almost hear Stick in the back of his mind, telling him, "You missed a few. Start over."

He digs his nails into his palms to shut the voice out, tilts his head and catches the stream in his mouth, rinsing out the last of the grease coating his teeth and cheeks and hiding under his tongue, and all he tastes is _clean_ and _cold._

Thank God for New York City tap water.


	4. Chapter 4

_Most of the time, Matt can tune out his senses and eat and drink like a regular person. He can eat hot wings with Foggy and drink bodega coffee and eat fries from questionable diners (the kind with C grades from the Department of Health posted in their windows - it's always obvious when Foggy lies and tells him it's a B). Unless Matt's really concentrating, his tongue won't ping anything outside of what the average person's would. He can just dial down his senses and tell his brain to behave._

 _Except for sometimes._

 _The bad times usually creep in when he's spending more nights on the streets, his senses turned up to the max. In the light of day, when he goes back to Lawyer Matt Murdock instead of Night-Crawling Vigilante Matt Murdock, it's like his internal dial gets stuck at eleven. All his other senses go back to normal but his sense of taste stays intolerably sensitive._

 _Stress, guilt, getting his ass handed to him in a poorly-matched fight - he hasn't really figured out a consistent trigger yet beyond the fact that when shit happens his sense of taste is usually an early victim._

* * *

Collecting himself, hunched over his cheap IKEA table with his hands pressed into the cool, lacquered surface, Matt smells the pinpricks of blood long before he feels them, seeping between his stitches into his dress shirt. He pokes gingerly at his side, mapping the edges of the knife wound with his fingertips through the cotton.

 _Damn it._ He takes a deep breath, annoyed. Retching into the sink like a drunken co-ed (pathetic) tore the stitched-up wound over his hip back open. From the feel of it (fingers prodding at swollen skin, all rough scabbed edges and red-hot angry irritation) whatever healing he'd managed has been sent right back to square one.

 _Got enough old wounds as it is_ , Matt thinks with a frown. He lifts up the hem of his shirt to get a better sense of the damage and the fabric peels away wetly, tiny little loops of thread catching and yanking at the scabby, oozing scar tissue. A small part of him wants to call Claire, ask her to come by – not that _this_ is really a good enough reason. Ripping his stitches for the umpteenth time isn't exactly life or death. It's just a complication, an _inconvenience_ – bad timing, considering the work he has yet to do.

* * *

 _A week of fucked-up eating is the norm: he spends too many nights out, doesn't get enough sleep, takes a few too many punches and his senses go haywire for a little bit. So he eats steamed and scrubbed and peeled organic carrots and triple-washed plain white rice and broth, all made safely within the controlled setting of his kitchen and reluctantly choked down until his control goes back to normal and he's no longer in hyper-contamination-detector mode._

 _Inevitably, after enough meditation and prayer and decent rest, he'll wake up in the morning and everything in his brain will have suddenly snapped back to normal and he can go back to eating fast-food burritos and questionably-aged leftovers from the back of the fridge. Like nothing ever happened._

 _Hell, it used to happen back in the day when he was too focused on school or, God forbid, a girl._

* * *

He gets into the shower to rinse the stale coffee and vomit and sweat off his skin.

He doesn't want to call her, he decides. Tells himself firmly, more like. That would be the wrong thing to do, after all that's… after all they've already said to each other. He owes it to her to let her escape the city for a while. Escape the drama and danger he's dragged into her life.

Mouthing: _one, two, three, four_ … he starts his count, fingers traveling across his body. The water hitting his skin make his wounds light up in his mind's eye: cuts and bruises and scrapes all a mix of fresh and half-healed. Three stab wounds, a half-dozen grazes that aren't much more than rough scabby patches now, a split knuckle, too many bruises to even bother counting. Plus one toe he suspects is broken, along with a pissed-off rotator cuff in his left shoulder. He opens his mouth to rinse out every last food particle, then takes a wash cloth and scrubs at his hands, his feet, his face - clammy skin turning raw and sensitive. He turns up the temperature until the water is almost intolerably hot and stands with his hands braced against the wall, submitting himself to the pain.

Not that ablution has ever really managed to fix his head.

* * *

 _One time, a particularly miserable course on tax law had sent him into a two-week tailspin during which he hadn't been able to choke down much more than black coffee and peeled organic apples for two or three weeks straight._

 _Foggy'd nearly lost it on him, thought he was starving himself on purpose. He'd even brought him pamphlets from the health services office, a whole handful of them - which Foggy had offered to read out loud to him when he, completely mortified, realized they weren't exactly the most helpful resource for Matt._

 _It was touching, though. Really touching. At least it was once he got past the extreme guilt (and embarrassment, and shame) he'd felt after he found out Foggy had failed a midterm or two because he was so preoccupied with Matt's food… issues._

 _Even now, when Matt thinks back (remembering Foggy yelling and waving pamphlets through the air and smelling like stress-sweat and liquid courage), he can't help but feel a glowing, aching sort of love at the pit of his stomach. He thinks maybe that was the day he realized that, after being alone for so long, suddenly he wasn't._

 _At the end of a slow but unstoppable transition, like a shifting tectonic plate, Foggy had become his family._

* * *

He gets dressed in the most boring clothes he can manage (jeans, t-shirt, windbreaker on top of hastily-taped bandages) and takes the afternoon to case the place. He knows it's not enough time to be thorough, but it's the most he can allow himself. As long as he's quiet, _invisible_ , it'll be enough to get what he needs.

Enough time to memorize the perimeter and the layout of the place: service entrances, convenient windows, air ducts if he gets desperate enough. (He has yet to go full Die Hard – mostly because the average air duct is only inches wide - but he figures he shouldn't rule it out as an option.) When it comes to getting things done as safely and cleanly as possible, having a way out saved in his metaphorical back pocket is almost more important than finding the way in.

The address is easier to track down than he'd expected. West 44th towards 12th Ave, the unmarked door with thick layers of graffiti leading into a basement storage unit. "Near the dog park," Amanda'd instructed.

And there it is. He runs his fingers over the drips of spraypaint, tries to memorize their pattern, and listens. Quiet. And then:

 _DO YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST DO WHAT YOU WANT WITHOUT REPERCUSSIONS?_

Male voice, furious, voice cracking ever so slightly at the end. He just barely hears a few tiny whimpers in response to the shouting, and it's all Matt can do to swallow his adrenaline back down and stop himself from ripping the door open with his bare hands.

 _Can't do anything in broad daylight,_ he reminds himself. _Give yourself time, this has to be done right._

He leans against the wall, next to the door, and pulls his phone out of his pocket. He holds it up to his ear, pretending to listen to someone on the other end, so he doesn't look conspicuous as he leans in and focuses on the origin of the voice. The shouts are echoing from one floor down, solid cement stairs leading into a shallow basement.

 _I DON'T_ CARE _IF YOU LOST A TOOTH, CHRISTOPHER, I BLAME_ YOU _FOR THIS FUCKING MESS. THAT LITTLE BITCH IS A GODDAMN LIABILITY._

The guy's got a New York accent - one of those rough stereotypical ones, like he's from an old Italian family in Brooklyn or straight out of a bad mob movie. Matt wonders, vaguely, if the guy's gonna be wearing a gold chain and a wifebeater when they come face to face, when he gets to break every bone in the asshole's body. It'll almost be a disappointment if he isn't.

Everything has to be done as cleanly, as smoothly as possible, before the cops come. The monsters can't know what hit 'em - it's the only way to keep everyone safe. He wanders around the building (under the guise of taking a very important private call) and finds a vent that seems to lead into the basement and listens hard for heartbeats, voices. It's hard to pick them out individually, but the tiny whispers echoing off the cold, hard walls help him guess: six, maybe seven. That's good, that's promising: Amanda had told him seven.

The image of her pleading with him flashes through his mind, her arms wrapped around herself, shaking but trying to hide it: _Just get them out, please. Us older ones, we're tougher, so get the littler ones out first if you gotta. Especially Colin, he's too young, you know?_

He circles back to the front of the building, cane held out in front of him and glasses on, and pauses briefly, compulsively reaching his hand out and pressing it against the door. The metal is warm from the heat of the sun, and it burns under his palm as he presses it into the speckled spraypaint.

"I'll be back soon," he whispers, before disappearing into the river of pedestrians.


	5. Chapter 5

Nightfall takes an eternity to come, but when it does: time is up.

He makes his way across Hell's Kitchen, cutting a straight path over apartment buildings, down alleys, jumping across rooftops. No dress shoes and vigilante mask tonight; this time, he's fully suited up. A red and black spectre out for blood. Normally, he'd think maybe Foggy was right, the horns _are_ a bit too much. _A little too on-the-nose, you know?_

But tonight, they're perfect.

 _Because tonight, he's going to bring them hell._

* * *

An open service door on the roof gets him in. _Idiots._ Down three floors, all empty rental spaces - smells like envelope glue and packing tape - until he reaches the main floor. A hand on the door and the feel of spackled, rusting paint combined with hissing air brakes outside confirm he's at the graffiti door. Okay, so that means...

Voices. Two men, talking about - what? Football bets, something like that. They sound relaxed, like they're sitting around a bar shooting the shit. Good. It's always easier when the guards aren't on guard.

 _I ever tell you I lost eight grand on the Giants last year? My wife nearly killed me._

 _You didn't have to tell me. I already knew you had shit taste, man._

Matt quietly unlocks the front door (he notices it's just a deadbolt - they must not be worried about any of the kids making it this far) before slowly padding down the staircase, hands tracing the walls on either side, feet as soft as a kitten's.

He hits a landing, listens again: thirty feet away, rubber boots pacing on cement floors. Back and forth down a hallway, like he's on watch.

He pins himself against the wall until the footsteps turn and head away from him, then covers the rest of the staircase in long, silent strides. He ducks into the room to his left - empty, no movement or heartbeats - and waits for the footsteps to come back his way. Waiting for just the right moment to -

Matt grabs the goon, hand over his mouth, arm around his throat, takes three steps backwards, back into his hiding spot. Breaks the guy's fibula with a well-placed downwards stomp before cracking him at the base of the skull with his baton.

He gently lays the guy (limp as a ragdoll and down for the count) on the floor and stays in a crouch, listening over the sound of his own heart pumping hard in his chest.

A whimper. Behind a door, or maybe two - but still clear as a bell (and young, very young).

 _Jesus Christ._ Matt steels himself. _Let's do this._

He takes off in a silent sprint, hyper-focused: voices, how many voices? _Three, adult, male_. Who else, how many? Big hearts beat in a deeper, slower rhythm than little hearts - _six men total_?

He has the element of surprise on his side, he just has to hold on to it.

He slides around the corner and presses his back to the wall, grabs hold of the doorknob on his right. Listens, makes a mental count, then opens the door, shutting it gently behind him.

They're drinking Irish coffee and they freeze mid-bullshit:

"So I tells the guy - what the fuck?"

Knee to the groin on his left, elbow to the throat on his right, the flick of a knife coming out - duck, slide right, two hard punches to the ribs (the snap of a clean break) then a left hook to the cheekbone, he's down for the count. Out cold. A whoosh of air, fat fist moving fast, and the other guy connects a hard punch to Matt's kidney.

Matt stumbles, briefly, before spinning and using his full body weight to break the guy's jaw - a sickening sort of crack under his knuckles. The sonofabitch drops like a sack of potatoes.

He leans heavily against the wall and pants, giving himself the briefest moment to catch his breath, then heads back out, softly clicking the door shut again behind him.

 _Four left._

He continues down the hallway, arms held out, running his fingers along the walls. Counts each door, listens to the tiny breaths and whimpers behind each one.

 _Four left. Four left. Four left._

His head is blurry, his legs a little shaky - no food all day, nothing in his stomach to help dilute the adrenaline coursing through his veins and turning his heart into a bass drum.

There's a new, sharp pain in his side - he can feel cool air on a biting cut, realized belatedly that he caught that knife in a weak spot in his suit. He reached down to gently poke at the wound, feels the blood a millisecond before the smell hits his nostrils.

He shakes his head, tries to clear the metallic scent and the pain from his mind but he's lost track of the heartbeats and voices and he pauses, hands pressed hard and steadying against the walls, before a kick to the spine sends him tumbling forwards, barely catching himself on bruised knees and raw palms.

"What the fuck is this?" Jersey accent, real calm and cocky. From his tone, the guy must not know three of his men are laying half-dead behind closed doors.

That's good.

That means luck is still on Matt's side.

(He wonders if he's got Saint Nicholas - or maybe Saint Anthony? - watching over him, making sure he doesn't get his ass beat too bad.)

"Jesus, that's the guy." Another voice, much lower. Strained, too, like he's caught a punch in the throat recently. "That's the lunatic who jumped me. He wasn't wearing that fucking - fucking _devil_ costume last time, though. Actually – I think that's the guy from the _papers_ , man."

"You're right, man! The Daredevil." There's a hint of amusement in his voice and he says it like he's telling a spooky campfire story: the _Daaaaaredevil,_ wavering the 'a' for extra effect. He snorts a laugh and smacks his companion on the arm. "This little asshole's sure been fucking with our business lately. Got the big boss put away, now he thinks he's coming for us hard-working blue collar types. Boys! Come see the Daredevil."

Two more sets of footsteps, coming from the front and behind. He's got all four of them surrounding him now, just feet away. Matt stays low to the ground, focuses hard as Jersey Accent circles around him to crouch down by his face.

He raps his knuckles on Matt's horns, _knockknockknock_.

A wet, smacking sound, like the guy's licking his lips, and Matt can smell – almost _taste_ – the sour nicotine on his breath.

"Hey. Hey! You think you's a demon, son? I'll _show_ you a demon."

A tiny clink – the unmistakable sound of the safety being clicked off - and Matt pushes himself up, ducking under the gun and catching Jersey around the gut, pushing him to the ground. They land hard and the guy's head hits the cement floor, stunning him, giving Matt the opportunity to shove the butt of his palm into the guy's nose, shattering it. A shot rings out, nearly blowing Matt's eardrum out, and the bullet hits soft tissue with a dull _thwack_. The idiot accidentally shot one if his own.

Screams, tiny and panicked, ring out from the rooms lining the hallway and gunshots mean it's time for Matt to mentally start his countdown til the cops come.

T-minus three minutes, GO.

Two more deafening shots - BANG BANG - coming from the other direction.

They whizz past his mask, only inches away, a high-pitched whistling in his ear that expands to a deafening bang as the bullets ricochet off the metal door at the far end of the hallway. One of the goons has pulled a gun.

Matt launches himself up and pulls out a baton, takes one millisecond to focus hard and aim before he whips it through the air. A satisfying clunk, right in the eye socket, and the guy drops his weapon with a scream, sending it clattering to the floor.

 _Move, keep moving._

THUNK. A punch connects behind his ear and all of his senses go blurry. Matt reacts on instinct, slowed but still deadly, and screams a war cry, the sound bouncing off the walls, creating a perfect map of the last two of his targets: one behind, squaring off with his fists up, the one in front of him shuffling backwards, making a break for it. Coward.

"Get the fucking gun!" The guy behind him shouts before charging. Matt spins, easily catches him with his shoulder and uses the guy's own body weight to flip him to the ground. Boot to the throat, boot to the teeth (crack-crack-crack-crack as they shatter under his sole).

The guy whose eyesocket he's just shattered makes the regrettable choice of getting back up and coming back for more, swinging wildly, and all it takes is a knee to the groin and an uppercut and he goes down hard, flopped on top of his associate.

 _One left. One left._

The last guy makes a scared noise ( _Good_ , Matt thinks, _you oughta be scared._ ) and moves to run. Matt bolts: one-two-three-four quick strides and he's on the guy, straddling his chest on the floor.

He rains down punches: one shot with his right fist to bloody the fucker's nose, another to break it, a heavy hit with his left, breaking the arch of his cheekbone (a dull snap like a green branch), and another, another, another, until he's pounding on the guy's chest, ribs breaking under his fists, his nose running and his eyes watering and something like a ragged sob escaping his lips.

The kids are still crying, screaming - yelling to each other, to anybody, for help.

It takes everything he has to stop himself. The guy's face is more hamburger than face anymore and Matt has to force himself to stop, to gather himself up and reach down for the keys he can feel shifting around on the guy's belt

The sirens are nearing outside, maybe a block away. He has thirty seconds at the most - _no time, no time._

"You're safe now," he says out loud, and even though his voice is cracking it's a promise. He hopes they can hear him through the doors. He fingers the keys desperately, his breathing hard and labored, before leaving them on the guy's chest, in plain sight. He tries to find his voice, loud enough so they can all hear him over their panicked cries: "The police are coming and you're safe now."

He makes his way up to the roof, dragging himself up the stairway with blood streaming down his side, before running and vaulting and climbing back across the city.

(The screams and cries of the kids - filtered through emergency sirens and shouting cops and those _fucking_ steel doors squealing open - follow him all the way home.)

* * *

AN: Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost and stolen things. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of children. Saint Matt is the patron saint of breaking people's teeth.

Thank you all for the kind words. I really appreciate it.


	6. Chapter 6

Matt wakes up just as the gentle heat of the morning sun begins to filter through his apartment windows. He clumsily reaches a hand out to tap the button on his talking alarm clock ( _six fifty-three a.m._ ) and groans at the lightning bolt of pain that shoots up his side.

There's a second pain, deep at the base of his stomach and he realizes that he's _starving_.

It's that aggressive, acute sort of hunger that selfishly pushes every other thought out of your brain until it's at the forefront of your consciousness, beating its chest and screaming for attention.

Matt tries to remember that word Foggy uses that he _hates._

 _What is it, again? 'Hangry?'_

 _Jesus._

He pushes himself upright, hunched protectively over the jab in his side (he can smell the oxidized blood on his bedsheets, prickling at his nose and making him huff to clear the scent).

He'd half-expected to be able to drag himself downstairs, down the block to the nearest Starbucks for an overpriced latte and a stale croissant, but the tang of his own blood on the back of his tongue, rusty pennies sliding thickly down the back of his throat, tells him that's probably not going to happen.

(It's not a great sign, but it's nothing a little meditation can't fix, either).

So he sets himself out a task list, in order of diminishing importance ( _patch yourself up, meditate, eat something_ ) then picks up his phone and realizes he can't remember getting home last night, can't remember putting himself to bed (he can smell the latex of his Daredevil costume, carelessly pulled off and tossed in the corner of his bedroom, but doesn't remember actually getting undressed).

He _is_ wearing boxer shorts, which he finds vaguely funny.

 _Matt Murdock: blacked-out from blood-loss or adrenaline or whatever, still too prudish to sleep naked._

He thinks hard but he can't remember if he's already called Claire, tail between his legs, to beg her to come patch him up, so he checks his outgoing calls.

 _Ah_.

He did call her, at three in the morning.

She didn't pick up. ( _Obviously_ \- he still has a gaping knife-wound in his side).

 _Fair enough._

There's only gauze and butterfly bandages and Polysporin for him to work with, but Matt does his best: gently cleaning in and around the cut, fingers tracing softly along the clean lines, prodding curiously at the sharp corners. The wound's roughly three inches long, just under his ribs. It makes a nice matching pair with the one Claire's always having to restitch.

He pinches his flesh together and secures a few butterfly bandages along the widest part but it feels almost futile, so he huffs in annoyance and slaps a square gauze pad over top, taping it carelessly and calling it a day.

It looks like meditation is gonna have to pull more than its fair share, this time.

He sits in the centre of his floor, cross-legged in half-lotus on hardwood (he can feel the knobs of his ankles and the press of his hipbones through the meat of his glutes, bruising and centering at the same time - he focuses on every part of his body that's touching the floor, the column of stability pressing up through his muscle and bone and reaching towards the ceiling).

Breathing deeply, he turns his attention inward, letting his hands rest on his knees.

He works on tuning out the big, the loud, the obvious. The whirring of the refrigerator. Below, the honking of impatient morning traffic. The screaming pain in his side.

Another deep breath, then another: he keeps his oxygen supply slow-fed and deep in his lungs, every exhale removing his thoughts, his pain, his lack of focus. Cleansing and slow: in, out, in out.

He works his way down to the minute details: the tickle of air against the tiny hairs at the tip of his left ear, the blood pulsing in his fingertips (palms upturned, thumb meeting middle finger like every stereotypical image of a meditating guru but it _works_ for him, damnit). The feeling of cool air flowing into his nose, meeting his lungs and seeping down to the very depths of them, before leaving his body in a gentle stream of warm air.

Once his mind is clear, he can refocus.

It's a little like resetting a server: you've got to shut it all down before all the connections can be remade, started fresh and strong and clear again. Matt presses outwards with his sense of hearing, starts from near up and works his way further out: his own breathing, the sound of the refrigerator, the girl in heels downstairs, the taxis honking outside.

Next, he presses outwards with his sense of touch (or, at least, what can be simplistically called his sense of touch: vibrational frequencies, small changes in air pressure, temperature differentials - all of these need to be recalibrated to acceptable levels). Smell comes next.

Then, finally, taste.

He starts from zero and slowly, slowly opens the floodgates. Just a crack, working his way back up until his senses are back at a reasonable level.

Full system reset complete. The Mac start-up sound plays semi-ironically at the back of his mind: ta-daaaah. Opening his eyes, Matt takes a deep breath before pushing himself up off the ground.

 _Alright._

He rubs his hands together like a gymnast preparing to do a vault, then makes a beeline to the fridge and pulls it open with a certain kind of cockiness, like, _let's get this over with_. But then the smell of days-old Vietnamese leftovers hit him, all pungent fish sauce and sour-harsh charred meat, and he has to slam the door closed again, his nose buried protectively in his elbow.

 _Well_ , he thinks. _Fuck_.

So he gets himself dressed (a hoodie and sweats because he couldn't possibly care less) and heads out the door, hoping that the organic grocery's open.

* * *

"You're not supposed to grocery shop when you're hungry."

That's what his dad used to say.

Not that they ever really had _real_ groceries at home. But sometimes they would go together, late at night when only the halogen-lit bodegas were still open, to buy Shreddies and milk and maybe some apple juice.

The thought makes Matt's chest tighten ever so slightly.

He remembers it in technicolor: seven years old, walking hand in hand with his dad under burnt-out streetlights and glowing red _Closed_ signs, past stumbling drunks, just to buy some breakfast cereal so he'd have something to eat in the morning before school.

Every time they'd pass some sketchy guy in a dim alleyway, Dad would squeeze his hand and he immediately knew there was nothing to worry about: nobody could hurt him, 'cause he was walking through Hell's Kitchen with Battlin' Jack Murdock.

It was the safest he's ever felt.

 _Anyway._

Matt pokes at a clementine, frowning, and a tiny cloud of sweet citrus envelops him. His mouth waters, but he moves on. Right now, he's singular in his hunt: _clean and bland and familiar._

He feels twitchy, knows that _unfamiliar_ (let alone _contaminated_ ) will be enough to make him reflexively spit his food out.

Which means he's stuck perusing the produce department until he finds something he can boil or steam into submission.

Meat is a no-go; it doesn't matter if he eats chicken breast or lean ground turkey or buys carefully-drained-and-deveined kosher steak - when his control slips up, the coppery taste of blood is almost always too intense for him to handle. One bite of ground beef and he can taste every particle of old, rotting meat trapped in the nooks and crannies of the grocer's meat grinder. One bite of steak and he risks the overwhelming taste of pus from a popped abscess – doesn't matter how carefully the butchers sanitize their equipment before they get back to work.

Nothing, _nothing_ lingers like the taste of pus.

Matt shivers a little at the thought.

Fish is sometimes okay, though. Sushi is a 'safe food' (the phrase makes him snarl his lip a little in annoyance). It's what he'll make if he absolutely _can't_ get out of making a meal for guests that's more than raw crudités. It's simple and clean and it's easy to manage all the variables when he makes it at home: fish (carefully purchased, flash frozen and thawed on a carefully disinfected porcelain plate), triple-washed rice, maybe even some low-sodium organic soy sauce if he can tell he's near the end of his… cycle and his sensitivity is waning.

Cooking isn't a hobby, it's a necessity. If he hadn't learned to cook, he'd have probably starved to death before he'd hit nineteen.

Anyway, even though he'd picked it up out of necessity, it's a nice skill to have. From an outsider's perspective, it's probably fascinating to watch a blind guy flit around the kitchen, tossing a wok full of vegetables perfectly with a learned flick of the wrist, knowing the contents of each identical spice container seemingly by heart.

(The spices become off-limits when his taste goes haywire, though; the average person would be _astonished_ at the number of rat hairs in the average shaker of, say, cinnamon or cayenne pepper or cumin.)

It's a particularly great skill for wooing girls - he'd figured that out quickly. Hell, even Foggy's convinced him (more than once, actually) to help him Cyrano his way into a few girls' hearts through their stomachs.

Right now, he's just concerned with getting some _calories_ into his stomach, so he tosses dried beans and half a fridge worth of organic vegetables into his basket and makes his way up to the counter.

(He catches the lingering glance of the girl behind the checkout and shoots her a smile and a wink behind his dark glasses. The blush that spreads like a flood of heat across her cheeks is oddly satisfying - he can control her biology even when he can't control his own.)

* * *

The radio is on, crackly and obnoxious, while Matt boils vegetables and works on putting together a hyper-vigilantly-washed salad.

 _Several as-yet unidentified men are in custody after a bloody standoff in Hell's Kitchen. Though no official statement has been made, sources say that investigators have made the discovery of a child-trafficking ring, potentially involving underage prostitution. According to sources, multiple children were rescued early this morning from a basement bunker._

The first step of preparing a meal, a snack, really anything he plans on putting in his mouth always involves cleaning every trace of _anything_ off, because the very last thing he can handle is the _surprise_ of, say, leftover dirt or, god forbid, manure coating his tongue and making his food climb back up his throat. Vegetables get rinsed, then scrubbed and scrubbed and _scrubbed_ , then peeled, then rinsed again. It takes him a full forty-five minutes just to clean the lettuce and zucchini and bell peppers and tomatoes he bought to his liking, carefully trimming and sniffing and scratching off anything that _hints_ at dirty or rotten or pesticide-tainted.

(He regretfully tosses three fragrant, juicy heirlooms because he can't quite get the smell of fertilizer off their skin and peeling them won't be enough to keep the taste out of his mouth.)

 _Police have yet to release the suspects' names. Sources say that the vigilante commonly known as the Daredevil may have been the first to arrive on scene - witness reports suggest several suspects were in critical condition upon the arrival of police._

Matt's in the middle of cutting open an avocado when his phone goes off, spooking him, and it nearly slips out his fingers, knife glancing off the pit and coming dangerously close to his thumb. Fumbling to wipe his hands clean, he rushes over to grab the phone off his coffee table before it stops ringing.

 _Claire. Claire. Claire. Claire._

"Hey," he answers, slightly out of breath. He steadies himself (but he knows he still sounds nervous and eager even though he's trying so hard to play it cool, like a kid standing against the wall at a school dance): "Hey."

"Hey." Claire's voice is tentative but warm. "I saw your call, thought I'd better check in. You okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah." Matt smiles in spite of himself. Her voice lights a small fire in the pit of his stomach and he tries to stomp it back out before it can grow. She's already defined her boundaries: this is a platonic conversation, _has_ to be after their last talk. This is business, now. Or maybe charity. Friendship?

 _Whatever:_ he'll take it.

He stumbles over his words: "I didn't know if you were back in town yet. I'm not - you know - bleeding _profusely_ anymore, but. I could use some stitches, if you're not -"

"Jesus, Matt." She sighs into the phone, and he can tell she's smiling one of those reluctant sort of smiles. "I'm still at work for a few hours. Did you already clean the wound - wounds? - and bandage them up?"

"Did my best," Matt nods into the phone. "I don't even know if you can still stitch them, they're a few hours old now, but."

"Ballpark?"

"Uh, six hours, maybe? Eight? I can't really remember when I got home last night."

On her end, Matt can hear bustling and beeping and somebody shouts Claire's name. She yells back, "Be right there!" then exhales, low and stressed, into the phone. "Alright, just keep everything clean and covered, and don't let anything dry up or scab up or else tonight's really gonna suck for you. Come over at seven."

"Thanks." He bites his lip, just a little too hard. Waits for her answer, just a little too eagerly.

"I'll see you later."

As soon as she disconnects, there's a knock at the door. Matt doesn't have to guess who it is, just shuts off the radio and lets Foggy in with a resigned smile on his face.

"Two wake-up calls in a row? I feel loved."

It comes out more sarcastically than Matt intends.

"Yeah, well. Like it or not, you are."

Foggy's tone is gentle and affectionate and all of Matt's defenses he'd prepared in his head come crashing down.

He scratches the back of his head, trying to hide his smile, and his fingers graze the swollen bump he'd earned from last night's suckerpunch.

Matt winces a little.

He admits, "I know."

Honestly, he _knows_.

"You cooking?" Foggy sniffs at the air.

"Trying to. You're welcome to have some." He shrugs and waves Foggy inside, shutting the door behind him.

"Depends on what you're offering."

"Eh," Matt groans apologetically. "Boiled zucchini."

"Alright, well, I appreciate the offer but I'm not sure I could ever be hungry enough to eat zucchini willingly."

They stand awkwardly for a moment, hands in their pockets because neither of them knows what else to do with themselves with such a massive, dancing elephant in the room.

Foggy rocks on his heels.

They both try to break the silence at the same time:

"I'm sorry I-"

"I didn't mean to-"

And then they both pause in unison. Matt gestures at Foggy, the corner of his mouth twitching into a grin. _You go first._

"I'm just. I'm glad you're okay, man. I'm glad you're still in – you know. One piece. I was afraid I was going to come up here and nobody was going to answer the door and – well. Yeah."

"Safe and sound," Matt promises.

"How was your night?" Foggy asks casually (almost casually: Matt can smell his sweat and hear his heartbeat, both of which suggest he's been working up to asking all morning). "I'd give you a sorry-for-the-fight hug, but you kinda look like you got your ass kicked and I don't want to squeeze any broken ribs."

"I have to lie down for about a hundred years," Matt groans in response, easing himself down at his dining table.

Underneath the tape and the gauze, he can still feel the knife wound pulling wide open like a grin on his side.

"And I _didn't_ get my ass kicked. You should see the other guys."

"Oh, so I've heard." Foggy nods sagely. "At least they didn't hurt your pretty face."

"Ha-ha." Matt shifts in his chair and his ribs and skull start screaming in unison, a shrill choir of pain ricocheting through his brain. "Hundred and _fifty_ ," he corrects himself.

"You sure you didn't get your ass kicked? You're moving like an old man." Foggy tuts in admonishment. "Not so _spry_ today."

"Oh, yeah," Matt agrees. "Mr. Magoo, maybe?"

"Shut up, dude."

"I'm blind, I'm allowed to be self-deprecating."

"Uh huh, sure." It's not quite clear if the sarcasm is aimed at the _self-deprecating_ part or the _blind_ part, but. Fair enough either way, Matt decides.

"You're right about the other guys though. From what I hear, they were begging for their moms by the time the cops showed

Foggy's tiptoeing, trying to avoid directly congratulating him on the bust, and Matt's pretty sure that it's a dissuasion tactic; if he doesn't provide positive reinforcement, then Foggy doesn't feel like he's encouraging him to keep running off and putting himself in harm's way.

They both know it doesn't make a difference (Matt always manages to put himself in harm's way, with or without an encouraging pat on the back), but at least this way Foggy's conscience stays clean-ish.

"Anyway. After-work beers. You, me, Karen. Tonight," Foggy instructs. "Celebration. Whiskey."

"What are we celebrating?"

"The fact that you're not dead," Foggy says coolly. "And that, once again, in spite of the fact that I'm a mother hen who's afraid to see you get hurt, you were a major hero last night."

Foggy clears his throat: _don't let it get to your head._

"Thanks." Matt smirks, a little touched. "And what does Karen think we're celebrating?"

"I told her you're buying us drinks to make up for bailing the other night."

"I'm so generous."

"It's my favourite thing about you," Foggy agrees.


	7. Chapter 7

He eats his food alone at his coffee table, plates and bowls spread across it like an offering to a hungry ghost.

After scrubbing, rinsing, peeling, boiling, he eats his food slowly and deliberately: teeth mashing soft, boiled vegetables (bland and safe and tasting only of green vegetal mush), the crunch and pop of raw bell peppers and the creamy fattiness of avocado breaking up the uniform taste of boiled zucchini, boiled carrots, boiled kai-lan.

(He can eat chinese broccoli but can't touch the regular stuff. Most people don't notice the hundreds of aphids - some dead, some still crawling - in every head. But Matt notices. " _You know, Matt, bugs are considered a delicacy in certain parts of the world._ " Stick used to say that, laughing whenever Matt would make a strangled noise telling him that he'd crunched down on a stray beetle shell or a well-hidden maggot. " _Stop being such a baby and clean your plate._ ")

He eats and eats and eats, compelled by ravenous hunger. He eats until he's uncomfortably full and is only compelled by the sheer need to force as many calories as he can into his body. His body is a tool, his body needs vitamins and calories and fat and he eats so it can keep doing its job (its job is blurred between reading and writing and arguing and running and punching and breaking bones). His mouth doesn't need flavor or texture or satisfaction as much as _his body needs fuel_ , so he shovels forkful after spoonful into his mouth, fingers mentally crossed that he can get it all into his stomach without anything setting him off and sending it all back up.

The last thing he needs is to vomit all his hard work into the garbage disposal.

Admittedly, he's stubborn: when shit gets bad he only has the patience to do this song and dance once per day, so he has to make it count.

He runs a mental tally and he figures, between the two raw avocados and the boiled, stomach-filling blandness, he managed to get in around 900 calories. It'll be enough keep him going through the rest of the day without his head swimming and his muscles aching.

Good enough.

* * *

When he gets to the office, Karen nearly pounces on him.

"I have something to _show_ you!"

He can't help but smile, because _finally_ , something's shifted ever so slightly in her demeanor, her voice: she sounds like herself, rather than the uncanny-valley impression of herself she's been doing for weeks.

It feels like a good omen.

"Hey," Foggy greets him with a nod from the conference table, flipping through paperwork next to a steaming mug of green tea (a flash of gratitude races through Matt's stomach - he won't be the only one turning down Karen's coffee this morning).

Matt waves hello and settles in beside him before Karen zips back into the room.

"So I looked into that building andyou'll never _guess_ what I found." She's almost giddy, talking a mile a minute and flipping through a stack of printed-out research. " _Dun-dun-dun!_ " She sing-songs, pulling a sheet from her pile and slapping it down in front of them.

" _Mikhail Zotov_ ," Foggy reads. "Who's he?"

Matt doesn't need Karen's explanation. He knows instantly who it is, and the name makes his heart feel something like stone.

 _Mikey_.

"He's a big-shot land developer, buying up properties that got condemned after -"

"After the sky opened up and aliens came out of it," Foggy offers.

"Yeah, that," Karen nods. "Not a very interesting dude, typical rich property-vulture stuff. _But_. You know that child trafficking ring that got busted last night? In the basement of that warehouse? No?"

They stare at her, poker-faced.

"It's all over the news, _come on_ guys. Anyway. I did some extra digging this morning and it turns out he owned thatbuilding too - he's wanted for questioning and the cops can't track him down. Totally disappeared off the radar, which, you know, is pretty damn suspicious." She pauses for dramatic effect, then adds, "Plus: his name alsopopped up on the donor lists of a few fundraiser galas from last year - in honour of a certain Bad Guy who's now awaiting incarceration thanks to us."

"Shut up," Foggy says, impressed. "You're thinking he's part of Fisk's Bad Guy Conglomerate?"

"Almost certain," she nods. "Has to be. Fisk had his fingers in everything, you think he wouldn't have known about this going on in his neighbourhood?"

"Unlikely," Matt agrees, releasing the breath he didn't realize he was holding.

"Anyway." Karen shrugs. "I don't know what there is to do with this information, considering the cops are already after him. But it's a weird coincidence, huh? I guess this means your case has to be put on hold, if the dude's on the run."

"Huh?" Foggy tilts his head.

"Yeah, guess it does." Matt laughs awkwardly, kicking Foggy under the table. _Come on, dude._

"Oh," Foggy yelps. He adds, uselessly, "Yep. Tenancy case. Yep."

"I wonder who else this guy's rubbing shoulders with," Karen says, tapping her fingers on the table pensively.

"Good point." Foggy nudges Matt's knee with his own.

The message comes through loud and clear and Matt curses under his breath. _Of course_.

Any investor from New Jersey to Beijing can pony up the cash to buy up post-tragedy Manhattan real-estate. What seals the deal (or, say: pushes through a contentious zoning clause or turns a blind eye to illicit freight shipments) is the answer to the question: _what else are you gonna give me?_

"Bribes," Matt says sideways to Foggy, nodding meaningfully. "Right?"

"Fuck," Foggy nods. "Yeah. What a bunch of assholes."

"Let me in on the mind-meld, guys?"

"If Zotov's a filthy-rich land developer, he doesn't need to make money by renting kids off the street to nobodies."

"How do you pay off powerful people who already have more money than God?" Foggy says softly.

Matt rubs his jaw, grimacing, before explaining: "You give them the opportunity to live out their most fucked-up desires, with the guarantee they'll be shielded from public exposure."

"Let alone, y'know, the law. So they can continue being politicians and CEOs and, I don't know, Gandhi for all we know."

"Jesus," Karen hisses. "You think that's what this is?"

Foggy nods. "Yeah."

"Yeah."

There's an uncomfortable silence.

"So what do we do about it?" Karen asks. _Of course she does_ : because Karen is Karen and if Matt's learned anything about her since she turned their duo into a trio, it's that she has the strongest moral compass out of any of them. Even though he knows that very same moral compass has the side-effect of pulling her-slash-them straight into trouble.

 _But damn, if he doesn't love her for it._

So they agree to let her go digging further and deeper under the condition that she vows her involvement won't go beyond the office. ( _Let_ is perhaps the wrong word: more like _Matt and Foggy agree not to bitch and moan and hassle her about it under that one condition_.)

She accepts graciously enough, with only the subtlest of eye-rolls that Matt has to pretend not to catch.

* * *

The rest of the day is a blur, and Matt could almost swear he blinks and ends up on Claire's couch, shirt off and the smell of iodine tickling at his nose.

"So your friend's a cutie." She's kneeling on the floor beside him, pulling out hemostats and scissors and nylon thread and laying them out for easy access. "God, Matt, you tore those stitches again?"

"You mean Foggy?"

He flinches as she prods at his side with gloved fingers.

"Right, I forgot he had a funny name. He didn't really introduce himself - actually, he was pretty damn pissed off when we met. You were bleeding all over the place but, out of the two of you, he was probably the bigger wreck. I think you scared him half to death that night."

"Yeah," Matt nods, wincing as she cleans the edge of his newer knife wound with an alcohol wipe. "I think I did, too."

"You guys are close, huh."

"He's kind of all I have."

He wonders belatedly if it's too honest an answer. Claire's hands pause for a moment, hovering an inch over his raw skin, before she sets to work, warning "Here it comes," a millisecond before she pulls a curved needle through the edge of the gash.

"So. The kiddie ring bust - that was you, right?" She always likes to talk while she stitches him up, and he wonders if it's to distract him from the pain or if it's to chase away the awkward silence while she's hovering over his shirtless chest. It's welcome, either way.

"Yeah," Matt nods. "Yeah, that was me."

"Those fuckers ended up in my emergency room early this morning. Nothing like being in charge of making sure some child-abusing peace of shit makes it through the night." She snorts a disgusted laugh. "I guess that's how decent society works. Can't just let someone lay there in front of you and die, no matter how evil they are."

"I guess so," Matt agrees weakly. "Did you by any chance - I mean, I don't want to, you know, get in the way of confidentiality, but -"

"You want their names?" Claire asks lightly, cutting him off. "I wrote them all down, the list's in my purse. You know, just in case they get off on technicalities and you need to visit them for round two."

He smiles up at her, slightly in awe, and she laughs darkly.

"God, that's terrible, right? I'm kind of a bad person."

"You're not," Matt insists, so earnestly that he pushes himself up without even really realizing it. He leans towards her. "You're..."

"Yeah, yeah." She groans, waving her hand dismissively. He can hear the grin in her voice. "You eat today?"

Matt freezes. "Hmm?"

"I can feel your stomach growling." She ties off a stitch and lays her hand flat on his stomach. "Yup. There's another one. Or maybe it's just a bad excuse to touch your abs." She makes an embarrassed noise and shakes her head and Matt isn't sure if it's because of the bad joke or because the joke falls on just the wrong (right?) side of flirting.

He also isn't sure how he's supposed to respond, so he just lays back down on her couch and awkwardly waits for her to finish up.

Claire quickly makes two more sutures, forgetting to warn him ("Sorry," she murmurs as Matt jumps a little), then pulls off her gloves, balling them up and tossing them onto her coffee table with a sigh. Matt follows the sound of her pushing herself up from her spot on the floor and padding in socked feet towards the kitchen.

He hears her yank open the fridge.

"Let me feed you. I've got leftover chinese, leftover thai… I could make you a grilled cheese sandwich? I need to go grocery shopping, if you couldn't tell."

"I'm not hungry," Matt smiles at her, hoping he can wiggle out of the conversation with a handsome flash of teeth, because he doesn't want to talk about it, because it's embarrassing, because he just wants to sit on her couch and smell the jasmine shampoo in her hair and listen to her make small talk while she stitches him back together.

She sighs (and, Matt can only assume, rolls her eyes). "Tough shit, I'm my mother's daughter."

He raises an eyebrow at her and he hears the fridge slam shut, feels a breeze of cold air on his face (tastes it, too: _milkricewiltedspinachtahinisalsamustard_ ). He hides his gag as best he can, a self-conscious brush of the back of his hand against his mouth.

"Never tell a Puerto Rican woman you're not hungry." She tosses something into the microwave as punctuation, a couple buttons beeping before the familiar electric whir. It only takes a millisecond for the smell to hit him: chicken in red curry and coconut rice. His stomach clenches reflexively.

It smells so, so good.

"What about Puerto Rican men?" Matt asks, sliding off the couch and pulling his shirt back on.

"Them too, I guess." She slams a cupboard shut. The pitch of her voice shifts as she turns to face him, and he can hear the disappointment and confusion in it as she realizes he's no longer prone on her couch. "Are you leaving? I still need to tape that up -"

"I'll be fine," he promises.

"Yeah, right. You know, you keep pulling those sutures open and you're gonna have an extra hole in your body - _permanently_."

"Kinky."

He slaps on his most charming grin, a sort of Hail Mary in his attempt to escape without a) vomiting anywhere in her apartment and b) upsetting her and ruining whatever affection in their relationship might still remain, but she just shakes her head at him. _Don't._

"I really do have to be somewhere," he says, palms to the sky. _Honestly: it's true_. He's already running late for drinks at Josie's (and Foggy had implied in no uncertain terms that even the suggestion of bailing would result in round two of stern and inevitable scolding. A fate Matt would really prefer to avoid.)

"Alright." She crosses the room to dig through her purse, pulling out a folded-up Post-It. "The list. Take it."

He does.

"I assume you can read that," she says.

He can.

Running his fingers across the ridges of her penmanship, he can easily work out the list:

 _Michael Ferrera,_ _Ken Maurer,_ _Alvin Bateman,_ _Clarence Wiseman_

"Thank you," he says, folding it and sliding it safely into the back of his wallet. "Seriously, thank you."

She nods, hands in her pockets. "Anytime."

They stand awkwardly for a minute, before she shakes her head and walks him to the door.

"You know the drill," she says. "I'll be around. Call me if you need me."

"You sure you don't want to come out for a drink?" It's more of a joke than an actual question, but he has to ask or else he'd spend the rest of the night wishing he had. "You and Foggy could bond over beers about what a pain I am."

"Goodnight, Matt." The smile in her voice mitigates the bite of her shoot-down. It doesn't hurt that he can hear her heart pounding nervously, too, and the sound of it makes his stomach flutter.

He crooks a smile back at her and ducks out the door.

* * *

The long walk to Josie's clears his head, and when Foggy and Karen wave him over to the corner table he's weirdly relieved that they're already halfway to being completely plastered, drinking straight whiskey and leaning intensely over the table at each other.

"Tell Foggy that he's wrong."

"About what?" Matt slides in beside Karen. "What have I interrupted?"

Foggy slaps his hand down on the table in mock-outrage. "She thinks Foo Fighters are better than Nirvana, and I think she needs to reevaluate her taste."

"Objectively better." She nods, stone cold: _try me_.

Foggy points a finger at her. "You're _objectively_ incorrect."

"This is serious stuff." Matt laughs and slides back out of his chair, throwing his hands up in deference before grabbing his cane. "I don't want to start any world wars, here, so I'm just gonna play Switzerland and keep out of this one by buying us drinks."

"Traitor," hisses Foggy, before he and Karen burst into laughter behind him.

Matt orders a whiskey, neat, for each of them and takes a few sips from his own while standing at the bar, distracted. The liquor burns on his tongue, strong but sanitizing, as he concentrates on the sound of the TV next door:

 _\- - has yet to make a statement. Reports are coming in that six children between the ages of ten and fourteen were rescued from the basement of the building, all of whom are in stable condition -_ -

The number of kids catches Matt off-guard (six?), but he tries not to pay it any mind - it's _astonishing_ how wrong the media can be. Hell, they still can't come to a consensus on whether or not the Daredevil is a cop-murdering lunatic or a neighbourhood hero. So. Whatever.

The channel changes, news anchor narration replaced by reality-show bullshit, and Matt realizes after a beat that he's been standing at the bar with his head tilted to the side just long enough to seem like a complete weirdo. He self-consciously recenters himself, grabbing their drinks and juggling his cane and making his way back to the table.

" _Prost_ ," says Foggy, grabbing two glasses from Matt's precarious grip and handing one to Karen. They clink them together, then raise their glasses to Matt. "Cheers to our benefactor."

"You're really going to make the most out of drinking on my dime, aren't you?"

"You betcha," Foggy assures him, and Matt can't help but laugh.

* * *

He catches up to them fast: four doubles of Jameson in quick succession and soon he's feeling light and tingly. Chatty. Maybe slightly horny.

Just, y'know. Loose.

It's been ages since the three of them have been _loose_ together: laughing and bickering and enjoying each others' company. It feels like sitting around the family dinner table, reconnecting after a long day.

(Loose is what they need. Hell, lately Matt could swear he can practically feel the knots in Karen's back from across the room: he can hear the slouch in her walk, the sighs she makes every time she gets up or sits down or looks out the window. He would never, ever say anything, but he can also smell the cigarettes she sneaks on her lunch break, clinging to her hair and not-quite-masked by her perfume.)

(He's struggling with whether or not he should say something about the whiff of liquor he sometimes catches on her breath on the days her voice gets tight and thin.)

"I just think there are better foods."

"Than pizza?!"

"When did tonight's theme become Question Everything Karen Likes?"

"Okay, okayokayokay. You're right, I'm sorry."

The bar TV flicks on and the 24-hour news cycle coverage of the bust blares through the chatter, a bunch of talking-head jackals fighting for dominance over the narrative. Typical American tragedy-whoring. It's fucking distasteful.

"God, I don't think I can take any more of this," Karen says dejectedly, thumping her elbows on the table.

"I'm sorry, I'll stop teasing you -"

"Not you, Fogs." She points towards the television.

"Ah," Foggy says uncomfortably. "Yeah. Shit."

They all listen for a bit, chins resting on palms and feet tapping anxiously on the sticky floor.

"Lotta guns in that hideout," Foggy says meaningfully, like he's just _saying_ it out loud to both of them, but Matt can tell it's aimed in his direction.

"Yeah," Matt agrees. He keeps his expression neutral. "Sure sounds like it."

Foggy takes an annoyed sip of his drink. Matt tries not to take it personally.

"What a bunch of pieces of shit. I hope they rot." Karen's glaring at the TV screen, heat radiating from her cheeks, the tips of her ears, even the tip of her nose, and Matt wonders if it's thanks to rage or the liquor in her bloodstream. She turns back towards them. "From what I read online, it sounds like the Daredevil got there first and beat the everloving shit out of those guys - that's the rumour going around, at least. Good on him."

"Good on him." Foggy raises his glass.

"Can we turn that down, Josie?" Matt asks wearily. The talking-head chatter on the TV fades out and he's left with the chatter in the bar - much more manageable.

He swishes his drink in its glass, trying to keep his hands busy so nobody notices he isn't actually _drinking_ anything (let alone going anywhere near those bar peanuts - he knows all too well that the urine myth isn't all that much of a myth, won't even touch them when his tastebuds are normal).

He'd forgotten to ask for no ice in the last round Foggy'd ordered and the sound of them, clinking around in his glass, makes his skin crawl.

 _Fun fact: the average ice machine is dirtier than the average toilet - toilets get cleaned a lot more often, actually._

"Jesus Christ," Foggy breathes, so quietly (just a whisper under his breath, silently mouthed under the din of the bar) that Matt has to fight against himself and pretend he doesn't hear.

He tilts his head in Foggy's direction.

 _What's up?_

Foggy shakes his head slightly.

 _No._

But then Karen barks, "Fucking _fuckers_ ," and Matt can finally ask.

"What? What's up?"

"Dude, I don't know if you want to –"

"They pulled a body out of the river," Karen says, the lividity in her voice and the painful thrum of her heart telling Matt everything. "Tourists found - earlier today, I guess - _Jesus_."

 _It's a kid, they pulled a kid out of the river, didn't they?_

But he needs to know for sure, he needs them to tell him what's flashing across the screen in big scare-letters, but then Josie turns the sound back on and the TV anchor's voice cuts back in,

 _\- - sources are telling us that the seven year old boy had not been seen for several weeks. His parents are both known to law enforcement for drug-related offenses, and statements from neighbours indicate that they had reported the couple for neglect several times without any response from Child Protective Services. The couple have been taken into custody, and several sources have suggested that the tragic death may have ties to last night's horrific child trafficking bust in Hell's Kitchen - -_

Matt barely feels Karen make a grab for his arm just as his head goes blurry and he doubles over, throwing up on his own shoes.


	8. Chapter 8

Foggy pulls him into the bathroom by his shirtsleeve, assuring Karen that _everything's fine, I've got this_ , before locking the door shut behind them.

"Dude," Foggy says softly, letting go of Matt's arm.

Matt collapses against the wall, knees buckling, and he slides down into an unsteady crouch. He rocks back and forth, hands pressed together, and being this close to his vomit-covered shoes is too much, too much, but he doesn't have it in him to push himself back up so he pushes himself somewhere else in his brain -

\- _He's too young, you know? Colin isn't as big as the rest of us, he doesn't understand what's going on, he can't... You just need to get him out._

\- _I promise._

"Matt!" Foggy says, low and urgent, and Matt isn't sure if it's the first time Foggy's tried to get his attention or the tenth but he does his best to look him in the face.

"I fucked up," is all he can really manage, because it's all there really is to say.

Foggy doesn't respond, just walks back and forth across the bathroom, chewing on a hangnail, and Matt can hear the click-rip-click-rip of his shoes clinging to the sticky floor as he paces. Finally, he stops: "We don't even know if it's related, Matt. It's just TV news bullshit - they don't know _anything_ , they just pretend to."

Matt shakes his head (the movement makes him realize he's about five times drunker than he thought - his skull feels weighty and fuzzy and he's pretty certain he can feel his brain sloshing from side to side trying to keep up). He tries to explain but his mouth and brain won't work together. "No - no. I know. I mean, I _know_. There were supposed to be seven kids in that basement, Foggy, and when I went in, I was _so sure_ they were all there. I took risks. Too many risks. Because I didn't want to wait it out and leave them any longer than I had to. Seven of them. That's what Pixie - I mean, Amanda - said. All too young, but. Colin was the youngest."

"Colin?" Foggy asks. Matt can hear the tightness in his throat.

"I was tracking them by their heartbeats, but there were so many to keep track of and they were all locked up in these metal cells and then I had to track the evil fuckers on top of that and I was already - I was having trouble concentrating."

 _You think a little grumble in your stomach is an excuse?_ Stick whispers in his ear. _Pathetic._

"You saved a lot of kids, Matt. You saved them from... from the fucking unthinkable."

"No, no, you don't understand - I was supposed to save them all, I was supposed to save _him_. And now - there are no second chances. This is my fault." His voice breaks, and Matt takes a shaky breath to try and regain control. _Don't cry. Do not cry._

"No," Foggy says firmly. He crouches down, too. "No, this is not your fault. Don't even think for a second that this is your fault."

"Of course it is."

The spins are making his brain cycle through his sensory input faster than he can process it: _piss rat feces bleach residue roach poison aerosmith blaring through the bathroom door._ Matt tries to push himself back up to standing but he's too drunk and too weak - inner ear's all fucked up and he's pretty sure he can feel the world spinning at a thousand miles an hour and he's also pretty sure he might puke again.

Sour-sweet whiskey-tinged stomach acid rises in the back of his throat and he reaches out to yank the garbage can towards himself, spitting into the trash.

"Fuck," he says. He leans his head against the wall, tapping the back of his skull against the tile. Once, twice. The third time he bangs it hard, white flashing through his brain and he knows it should hurt but it doesn't - actually, he's not sure if it doesn't hurt or if it just doesn't hurt enough, and he needs to do it again, do it right so that the pain can help him find himself again -

 _Boiled vegetables stomach acid fry grease you're a failure skunked beer Stick was right Karen's heartbeat TV still going he's dead it's your fault_

\- Foggy grabs his face, one hand on either side of his jaw, and Matt's world stops spinning.

(Just for the moment.)

"Hey," Foggy says, pulling Matt close. Their foreheads touch and Foggy's skin is warm and reassuring. His hair tickles Matt's nose. "Listen to me: Not. Your. Fault."

He wonders if Foggy can smell the vomit on his breath. He wonders if Foggy would even care, either way.

"Let's get you cleaned up." He reaches up to grab the roll of paper towel on the sink and rips off a few pieces before wiping at Matt's soiled shoes. It's probably futile - he can feel the moisture seeping into his socks and pooling around his toes.

"You don't have to," Matt says, trying to wave Foggy's hands away.

"Shhh. I got this."

It's a sweet gesture. Intimate, even: Foggy kneeling on the disgusting floor in his nicest dress pants, trying to wipe his own stomach contents from his shoes.

"John 13:8," Matt mumbles.

"What's that?" Foggy asks.

"' _No,' said Peter. 'You shall never wash my feet.' And Jesus told him, 'If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.'_ " It comes out as a whisper, automatic like a good Catholic boy, and Foggy _harumphs_ , wiping at a stubborn piece of half-digested vegetable stuck in his laces. "Or something like that," he adds, self-consciously.

"Well, I mean, if you're comparing me to _Jesus_ , I'll take it."

Matt lets out a startled sound, halfway between a sob and a laugh.

"Let's get out of here," Foggy says, before he pulls Matt into his shoulder, hugging him tightly (his fingers are wound in Matt's hair and the tiny pinpricks of pain in every follicle are all microscopic reminders of his love).

Then he lets go and stands up, pulling Matt up by his armpits.

* * *

A memory:

 _"It's an order, Matt. Not a request. "_

 _Cold cement floor under his hands and knees. Coppery blood running from the corner of his mouth. Can't breathe, can't breathe._

 _"You think this is a game? You think the second you show even a modicum of weakness your enemy won't slash your Achilles tendon and watch you flop around on the floor like a gasping fish? Don't be stupid. He'll stand over you and, while you're writhing in pain and begging for mercy, he'll laugh."_

 _Another kick in the ribs (another crack of splitting bone). He doesn't cry out, because he knows better._

 _"So I don't care if you've got the wind knocked out of you and you want to cry for your dead pops. When I tell you to put up your fists, Matt, you put up your goddamn fists."_

* * *

Then another:

 _A hand, brushing his knee._

 _An unkind laugh when he shifts away._

 _"It's not a request, Matt."_

* * *

He wakes up in his own bed, dry-mouthed and sweaty.

It takes him a little while to swallow down the fight-or-flight adrenaline making his fingers vibrate and his ears ring. These kinds of dreams are familiar enough that he doesn't have to spend too much energy convincing himself _it isn't real, not anymore._ (Some mornings, with intensive meditation, he can convince himself it never even happened at all.)

His breathing slows - agitation fading to exhaustion and, finally, Matt can turn his attention to the present.

He half-remembers walking home, embarrassed and fumbling for an explanation for Karen (" _I drank too much, that's all - and I think I'm getting the flu."_ ). He barely remembers falling into bed. Must have passed out quick - _what time is it?_

He shakes his head and realizes it can't be _that_ late: Foggy and Karen are whispering to each other and sharing a beer in his kitchen. He can hear them passing it back and forth, sips punctuating their sentences.

"He'll be out for a while. It was a stupid idea to go drinking, Matt's been burning both ends lately."

"Yeah, he looks like hell. Like he hasn't slept in a week."

"You know Matt. Probably hasn't."

Silence. Sip. Pass.

Karen's voice: "I've never seen him like that. Listening to the TV, he got this look on his face. Like he'd seen a ghost - or, well, you know what I mean."

Curled up in a ball with the sheet pulled up to his nose, he wonders, transfixed, how Foggy's going to respond.

But there's just the sound of rain spattering against the windowpanes and echoing against the concrete walls, until Foggy sighs and says: "Yeah, he did. Kid stuff is just... it's hard on him."

"I know he had it tough growing up."

"That's an understatement." A long pause. Another sigh. A hollow series of pops as Foggy cracks his neck, then his knuckles (a nervous habit Matt's always hated: the sound always reverberates through his brain like gunshots). "I don't think I even know the half of it, to be honest."

Sip. Pass. Sip.

"Someone should stay with him tonight," she says.

"I'll stay. You go home and get some sleep."

"You sure? I could stay."

"Nah, it's okay. I think babysitting is one of my official duties."

She laughs softly. "Okay. Let me know if you guys need anything. Make sure Matt guzzles some water and gets some greasy food in his stomach."

"I will."

A rustling sound, fabric on fabric, as they hug. Foggy walks her to the door and locks it behind her, then pads into the kitchen.

 _Open cupboard. Running tap. Crinkling plastic. Salt, butter, wheat._

Deciding that pretending to be asleep is the better option (rather than having to _talk about it_ again, _God no_ ), Matt shuts his eyes and tucks his chin as Foggy crosses the threshold and sets down a glass of water and a plate piled with saltine crackers on the nightstand.

He ruffles a hand gently through Matt's hair and whispers: "It's gonna be okay, man."

Then he stands for a moment, hovering silently - and swaying back and forth, just a little, because he's still kind of drunk - before padding into the living room. There's a whoosh of air as he collapses on the couch and, within minutes, he's sleeping like the dead.

Matt lies awake, focusing on counting Foggy's breaths: deep and steady and familiar, _in out in out._ It's more effective than counting sheep, and he can practically smell their dorm room again ( _neglected laundry and stashed beer and piles of textbooks_ ). He lies awake, running his fingers over his stomach: hipbones, the dip of his bellybutton, the line of hair running down his abdomen, the bumps and contours of muscles and sinew.

Beneath it all, he's almost sure he can feel he can feel the horns of the devil that's waiting to chew its way out.

* * *

 **Hello friends!**

 **That was 10 lbs of emotional trauma in a 5 lb bag, I'm sorry. I hope you liked it anyway.**

 **Thank you for all your extremely kind comments and for following this weird little (big?) story. This is officially the longest thing I've ever written? Crazy.**


	9. Chapter 9

He follows the rabbit hole: down, down, down.

* * *

"Dude, I'm _hungry_ , come _on_ ," Foggy groans, snapping his file shut. His stomach groans, too. It's a low, irritable grumble that Matt knows so well he could probably identify it out of a lineup.

Matt shrugs. His fingers glide quickly over his paperwork until he finds where he left off. "It's only, what, eleven?"

"Yeah, _and_ , we've been working all morning on nothing but hot liquids. I don't know about you, but I didn't have breakfast."

"You know, most people can survive until noon on green tea and coffee. Some people can even go past noon, if you can believe it."

Foggy rolls his eyes hard enough that Matt catches it.

"I saw that," Matt murmurs.

 _"_ I'm sure you did. Alright, " Foggy decides, drumming his fingers on the table impatiently. "Eleven is close enough. I'm calling it."

"So call it."

"I'm gonna. It's lunch time." Foggy slides his chair back, defeated, and Matt can sense him shaking his head. He pats his pockets for his wallet and heads towards the door. "You're gonna be real jealous when I come back with banh mi and you're stuck with - _not banh mi_ ," Foggy warns. He pauses in the doorway, and Matt can hear his heart anxiously pick up the tiniest bit of speed.

"I'll live with my choice," Matt promises, waving a goodbye over his head before picking up where he left off. "Don't worry, I'll snack on something later."

The door clicks shut. "Sure you will," he hears Foggy mutter from down the hall.

 _Shit._

Matt pushes his paperwork away and runs a hand over his face, frustrated.

* * *

It's becoming more obvious, now - _obviously_ , it's becoming more obvious. Half the time he's ducking out of the office at lunchtime to run some spurious errand and the other half he brings himself a packed lunch; methodically-cleaned veggies in methodically-cleaned Tupperware, eaten with methodically-cleaned silverware.

He prefers the lies to the packed lunches. They're easier, really: they come with much less scrutiny.

Sometimes, on his way back from made-up errands, he hears Foggy and Karen discussing and speculating in hushed tones. He listens to them from the hallway, leaned up against the wall next to the office front door, as they commiserate over paperwork and cold coffee and half-eaten takeout.

 _\- I'm just saying… I don't know what I'm trying to say. I'm just saying it's weird for Matt to bail on Thai food._

 _\- Maybe he's watching his sodium?_

 _\- That's not funny._

 _\- I know. Sorry._

 _\- Something's up, you know?_

 _\- He's stressed. He'll be okay._

And it's true: Matt will be okay. He always is. The dishonesty is uncomfortable, but Matt knows well enough that explaining everything to Foggy (everything meaning _broken senses_ and not _all the underlying shit he won't even tell his priest_ ), wouldn't make Foggy worry any less. Just the opposite; it would probably kick Foggy's worrying into an even higher gear of scrutiny and stress and well-intentioned worrywart mothering.

The last thing he needs to do is present Foggy with another problem he can't fix.

* * *

Foggy gets back to the office with banh mi and an iced coffee and Matt's pretty sure he waves it around the office as he eats it just to get the smell creeping up Matt's nose.

"Alright, you were right. I should have gotten takeout," Matt admits, good-naturedly. He waits until Foggy's finished eating to say it, though, because he knows without a doubt that if he hadn't Foggy would've offered him half.

* * *

The public latches on to Colin's story quickly, just like they do with all tragedies involving little kids. It's only a few days before his name is released to the press, but they all call him the Harbour Angel anyway.

The nickname ( _Is that what you call those kinds of things_ ? Matt wonders darkly) makes him want to crawl out of his skin every time he hears it - from the radio of a passing car, from his neighbour's TV left on at four in the morning, from hushed conversations over brunch heard from two blocks away.

The community sets up an evening vigil in his memory, banding together around the memory of a boy no-one bothered to look for, a boy nobody rallied around when he was still alive. It's an opportunity to light candles that warm their faces and hands, but it doesn't change anything.

Matt goes anyway.

He tries to sneak away to attend without Foggy or Karen suspecting anything, ducking out of the office with a mumbled excuse and a flash of a smile, but they're already two steps ahead of him.

"We're all going," Foggy says, his hand heavy on Matt's shoulder. It's half-statement, half-don't-argue-with-me, and Matt almost finds it in him to feel grateful. Karen pulls on her big wool coat and loops her arm through his, their bodies bumping gently against one another as they walk the handful of blocks towards the community gardens, Foggy following behind.

The vigil is packed. There are more people than can fit in the walled-in garden and they spill onto the sidewalk and street, obstructing traffic. The solemnity seems to permeate the area, though, because no-one honks. The cars just creep through the crowd, engines humming and radios turned down.

"There's a lot of people here, easily a couple hundred," Karen says for Matt's sake. "Do you want a candle? They're lighting candles." Matt doesn't, not at all - he wants to be part of the rite and entirely separate from it at the same time - but he still nods, once, and she lets go of his arm with a gentle parting pat on his hand. "Be right back."

His ears catch the sounds of a Hail Mary, whispered softly somewhere in the crowd, and he follows along automatically, lips moving soundlessly,

\- _Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at our hour of our death. Amen._

"You say something?" Foggy asks.

"Nah." Matt shakes his head. "There's a chill in the air." He shoves his hands under his armpits and tries to quiet the din of voices from the crowd all fighting for dominance in his head.

 _\- and when I saw his picture on the news, I couldn't believe it -_

 _\- little blond thing, what kind of monster -_

 _\- those men will pay, does New York State have the death penalty?_

"Yeah," Foggy nods. He blows into his hands and rubs them together. "Nice to see all these people showing up. Showing they care." He touches Matt's back, a small gesture. After the past few nights - waking up to half-remembered nightmares and twitchy fists - the touch should have made his brain spark and his body yank away. But it's neutral. Calming. It's ok, even though nothing's okay.

Karen wanders back with their candles and Matt lets her guide his hand to the cheap plastic handle.

Soon, the crowd is a sea of little flickers of heat: hundreds of heartbeats and tiny candle flames. It takes Matt a while to identify the nostalgic ache that rises in his chest, but it comes back to him all at once. He remembers coming to the community gardens as a kid. He'd always try to come just as the sun was setting, right when it got dark but the humid summer heat was still settled thickly across Hell's Kitchen. He'd pull on his dad's sleeve and tell him to hurry up, that they were going to be _late_ . Because, at sunset: that's when the fireflies would come out.

Tonight's too cold for fireflies, but the tiny flames are close enough and Matt hopes, he hopes they can be seen. Way up there. Matt crosses himself covertly before they leave and tilts his head towards the sky with a silent prayer.

 _Di meliora._

* * *

It's not long before he tracks down Colin's - he doesn't want to call them parents. _Parents_ is more than they deserve.

The cops couldn't make the charges stick, so they go free, and Matt quickly finds them squatting in a warehouse with a vinegar-and-sweat aura of heroin fumes and body odour. The smell floats for half a mile around the place and he has to approach the entrance with his nose pressed into his elbow.

Curled up together on a ratty corduroy couch, they're the most stereotypical junkies he could have imagined. They have greasy hair and knobby, scabbed bodies and sour breath like the steaming piles of garbage that line Manhattan's streets in the summer, the ones that make him stumble back like he's been punched in the nose on the days the temperature hits 85. Nodding in and out, they don't notice him right away, so Matt pulls the guy up from the sofa by his throat and tosses him against the wall like a ragdoll.

It wakes him out of his stupor quick enough.

The guy tries to explain, his tongue slowed and fumbling from the dope:

"We didn't know what to do!"

Tries to reason with Matt, as if someone in a mask is someone looking to be reasoned with:

"We needed the money. He's a good boy, but we needed the money."

They both cry, snot-nosed and pathetic, hands out and begging for forgiveness:

"What were we supposed to do? We couldn't pay them back, we don't have any money. They were going to kill us. It was our only way to pay back what we owed."

"They said they'd take care of him, how were we supposed to know?"

Their pathetic attempts at wiggling their way out make Matt's jaw twitch and his fists tighten and he has to punch the wall, his fist making the brick shudder ever so slightly, to keep himself from wrapping his fingers around the man's throat. Pain radiates from his knuckles, glowing and pulsing, and it eases the rage in his brain just enough that he's able to remind himself why he's here.

The distraction is just enough that he can remind himself he doesn't kill. Won't kill. Won't let this motherfucker be the exception to that rule.

The worst part is: he can tell by their heartbeats that they believe their own lies.

"Where can I find Zotov?" He hisses, lips millimetres from the junkie's ear. His hand is wrapped in the guy's shirt and he presses him backwards.

There's a grinding sound, the sound of the guy's shoulderblades pressing into the rough brick, and it's met with a painful wheeze escaping from the junkie's lips.

"Who?"

Matt pulls his head back and drives it forward again, his forehead connecting hard with the bridge of the motherfucker's nose. There's a second satisfying clunk, as the guy's head bounces off of Matt's skull and cracks backwards against the brick.

He scrambles like a rat in a trap and lashes out with every limb, grubby fingers scratching at Matt's face and torso.

Matt slams his fist into the guy's nose to subdue him.

"Don't fuck with me," Matt warns. There's blood pouring out of the guy's face and Matt does his best to avoid the biohazard as his fingers find purchase once again on the junkie's shirt.

Matt whips him to the ground and kicks him, once, twice in the ribs. Once more in the teeth, for good measure. He feels the split-hotdog sensation of the fucker's lip busting open under his shoe and a bolt of satisfaction shoots through Matt's brain.

The guy is on all fours and crying like a little kid, drooling a puddle of blood onto the floor through the holes left by his missing teeth. Matt kicks him in the gut again, hears the thud of the impact against his liver. "You better start giving me something useful before I rupture every last organ barely keeping you alive."

You see, the thing about junkies is they don't have much resolve.

Don't ask them to keep your secrets.

The guy must have decided that he'd rather keep the last couple of rotted teeth in his mouth, because he starts leaking information: slow and steady like an oilspill, and maybe none of it is good, maybe none of it is true - he's just a fucking junkie, half out of it and desperate to keep the rest of his teeth - but Matt lets him cry on the floor until his words run out and his breaths turn into ragged sobs.

"They said they'd take good care of him," he chokes out, once his information runs dry. "They said our debt would be wiped clean. They were paying us - in, in -" he digs in his pocket and pulls out something small. Matt sniffs the air and holds out his hand and feels tiny balloons of heroin drop into his palm. "They said he could come back after a few months."

From his heartbeat, Matt can tell he's most likely telling the truth. He still breaks the bastard's jaw in three places, anyway, as his wife ( _co-conspirator, travel partner on the road to hell_ \- whatever) screams bloody murder, huddled up in the corner.

"They should have killed you instead."

He says it quietly over his shoulder as he leaves, contaminated blood dripping from his knuckles. Then he leaves them there, leaves them in the vinegar-and-sweat squat to live with their sins.

From the sounds of their heartbeats receding behind him, he can tell they know he's right.

* * *

The anxiety from the junkies leaves him on edge ( _murderous_ might be the right word, but it's exactly the mental state he's trying to avoid), so he heads straight to Fogwell's to spend the energy sizzling in his muscles.

It's a good idea and a bad idea, all at once: a good idea, because it gives him the opportunity to pummel the hell out of something that won't up and die from blunt force trauma.

It's a bad idea, because he's been running on near-empty since his senses have shot to eleven and the last thing he needs to do is burn more calories than he can afford.

In the last two-weeks-and-change he's lost seven pounds (and eight ounces - he doesn't need a talking scale to know exactly how much he's down). It's not enough to be immediately visible with clothes on - his jaw is just a touch sharper, his trousers just a smidge looser. But he can feel the difference clear as day when he shifts his weight from foot to foot, or when he pushes himself out of bed in the morning.

When he runs his fingertips over his arms, his stomach, his ribs, he can feel the distance between skin and muscle growing smaller, millimetre by millimetre.

It's a sick thought, the kind you hide in the deepest untouched part of your brain, but it feels oddly like his real self is coming to the surface. He feels like Saint Catherine - his spirit becoming cleaner, purer, less weighted-down by the profane. ( _Whatever._ He reminds himself: _Saint Catherine was a kook.)_

He also doesn't have enough energy right now to spend it worrying about any of that shit (his punches getting weaker, his metabolism chewing at his muscles like a hungry dog, the hazy aura creeping in at the edges of his senses) so he focuses everything on the heavy bag.

 _Hard jab, right hook, bob, jab, jab, hard hook with the left._

Come to think of it, he's not sure if he can blame oversensitive senses anymore, if his avoidance of food is becoming less out of disgust and more out of habit, whether the gnawing hunger in his stomach is becoming a comfort rather than an annoyance - _No. Stop._ Matt shakes his head and hisses a breath and squares off again, fists clenching and unclenching. _Refocus_.

Attacking the bag with a steady rhythm sets the stage for him to replay the junkie's words over and over, search for clues in the muttering and mumbling and sobs:

 _\- Michael - Markus? Markus Wurth, maybe. Somebody Cohen. Molina. Some guy with a crooked nose - bad teeth, like real bad and black around the edges. I don't know man, these are all just names I've - we've - heard. We don't know nobody. Just names, overheard - sometimes they'd let Colin come home and he'd tell us names but I don't know, I don't know -_

He runs through the list, over and over, committing it to memory:

 _Michael. Thump. Markus. Thump-thump. Cohen. Thump-thump. Molina. Wurth. Thump. Bad teeth. Thump._

Foggy calls him halfway through, because that's what Foggy does. He's always had an innate sense of when Matt would least like to answer his phone.

"Hey." He puts it on speaker and sets in on the ring next to him, then continues to pummel the shit out of the heavy bag.

"What's that sound?" Foggy asks. "Are you punching something?"

"Yeah," Matt grunts, a few more staccato thumps filling the silence for good measure.

"Well, could you maybe," - _thump thump thump thump_ \- "stop punching? For like a second? Jesus." _thump_ \- "MATT."

Matt stops, more because he's out of breath than because he's heard a single word Foggy's said, and he reaches out with wrapped hands to steady the bag. He pants hard. He can hear his knuckles creaking. "Sorry, yeah. I'm listening. Sorry,"

"It's okay," Foggy says. "I mean, it's good you're - nevermind. I know it's your brain-clearing ritual. Like me and spaghetti."

Matt snorts a laugh. "Yeah, totally the same."

"Eating can be a ritual. Eating is actually, like, the ultimate ritual. Worldwide. Whatever - that's actually an excellent segue, thanks for setting it up, because we're doing an old-fashioned family dinner tomorrow night."

 _Damn it._ Matt closes his eyes and presses his forehead against the heavy bag. "We are?"

"Yes, and because I am an incredibly transparent person I'm just gonna up and tell you it's because you look like hell and your fridge is nothing but condiments and that's what friends do when their friends are going through a tough time. They make their friends a casserole. And then they make their friends eat that casserole."

"I guess I'm the one who's transparent?" Matt laughs hollowly. He regrets saying it almost as soon as it comes out of his mouth. It means admitting to more than he's really willing to admit to.

But Foggy just makes an earnest sort of noise and says, "Yeah, man. I mean, well, no - you're a fucking brick wall. But I have X-ray vision."

And it's true.

"I should tell you," Foggy continues. His voice becomes a little darker, a little more guarded. "Something kind of fucked up happened."

"Are you guys ok?" Matt asks quickly.

"Yeah, yeah," Foggy says, just as quickly. "Sorry, I shouldn't hit you with vague statements like that. Sorry. Anyway. We got a phone call the other day - same day as the vigil, I didn't want to bring it up before, but, one of those fuckers from the basement called. He was looking for representation."

"Jesus," Matt swears. He pounds a hand against the side of the bag. "He didn't go straight to Landman and Zack? The big guys?"

"From the sounds of it, the big guys didn't want the bad press. And the dude doesn't have two dimes to rub together. Which is surprising," Foggy hisses. "You'd think child-trafficking was a lucrative racket."

"I guess it was just a passion project for him," Matt says. It's gallows humor, and Matt isn't sure he has it in him for gallows humor tonight but it helps, just a little, to hear the anger in Foggy's voice. Helps to hear the anger that mirrors his own.

"Anyway," Foggy says after a moment. "Karen hung up on him once she figured out who he was. You know, on the phone, he mentioned wanting to sue 'The Daredevil'? Your first defense case with you on the wrong end of it." He laughs.

"Wow," Matt says softly. "Well. There's a first for everything."

"He wanted to sue for 'excess force,' like you're on police payroll or something. Not the sharpest tool."

"I mean, if we can get me put on city-paid leave, it wouldn't be the worst thing. I could use a vacation."

Foggy barks a laugh, just once, then falls quiet again. "I'll let you get back to your - you know. Punching. Just don't bail on us tomorrow, okay? Come for Sunday dinner."

"I will," Matt promises. He adds, because he knows he should, "Thank you. For looking out for me."

"It's my job. I'll see you later, man." Foggy disconnects.

His words hang in the air for a few moments before Matt picks up his rhythm on the heavy bag: twice as hard and twice as fast.


	10. Chapter 10

The stories are one of the few things he's consciously kept with him from the orphanage.

He keeps an itemized list in his head of all the things he lost before he got there and another list of all the things he lost after he left. The former includes an original, mint-condition Captain America collectible card his father had given him for his tenth birthday - he didn't really care about stuff like that, not really, but he treasured and protected it the way you treasure and protect things that are loved by the people you love - as well as five braille books - The Hobbit, Matilda, The Little Prince, Lord of the Flies, and a massive World Atlas - that his dad had saved up for and brought home, one by one, like offerings. He'd read them over and over under the covers after his bedtime and he could see every character, every vista in his head as though he'd never gone blind at all.

They all got lost in the shuffle from the apartment to the orphanage, or maybe the nuns threw them out after he'd arrived. It's hard to be sure (and, Matt's long since decided, it doesn't really matter anyway).

After he left the orphanage he'd shed most of what he'd accumulated, getting rid of it all with the same disdain as if he were ridding himself of fleas. Some things, like the cheap, donated shoes that smelled like other people's feet, were easier to lose than others (the names of the younger boys, the ones he tried to protect but sometimes couldn't, and the small, lumpy scars on his knuckles from the thwack of a ruler - they took longer to fade). But he kept the stories he learned in the convent close to him, sewing them inextricably into his sense of self like panels in a quilt.

Saint Catherine of Siena's always been Matt's favourite saint, ever since the first time he heard about her. His dad used to tell him about saints, Saint Jude (who became his other favourite later on, for other reasons) or Saint Peter - whoever his dad needed a favor from on any given day. But he didn't learn about Saint Catherine until he ended up in Saint Agnes, where the nuns and the more seasoned, jaded orphans turned her into something closer to a spooky story than a saint. Matt's always felt she deserves better than that. She was honourable, something to aspire to if you looked beneath the surface - on the surface, she appeared to be nothing more than Crazy Saint Catherine, and the other kids liked to tell sneaky, funny stories about her. How she wore Christ's foreskin on her finger as a wedding band (that was a personal favourite of many of the boys - they'd titter about it like they'd told a rude joke), or how she would throw up her food to pay for her sins.

The best story they'd tell, the one that even the nuns would trot out sometimes to teach a lesson (and, probably, to relish in the shock and horror of a room full of riveted adolescent boys), was the one which, upon hearing it, Matt immediately wrapped around himself like a safety blanket.

A fellow nun in her congregation had fallen victim to cancer. The tumour had eaten away at her breast, leaving nothing but an oozing, open sore that was said to have smelled so terrible that visitors to her bedside were compelled to pinch their noses shut. But Catherine, pious and charitable Catherine, volunteered to nurse her fellow sister. And, even as the wound became so odious that it was nearly intolerable for anyone else to be in the same room as her patient, Catherine never displayed disgust. Day after day, she would wash and dress the gaping wound, breathing through her nose as if she couldn't smell anything at all.

Her generosity wasn't just in her ability to ignore the stench: Catherine took up the job caring for the woman in spite of previous harsh treatment. In the past, the fellow nun had been the source of rumours, accusations - tarnishing Catherine's name through quickly-spreading slander. Catherine knew, however, that the woman had merely made a mistake, seduced by the devil on her deathbed. So she pushed on and forced herself to treat her sister with humility and grace. The woman accepted her charity, too, because she had no other options: no one else was willing to assist her. They were stuck together.

One day, however, Catherine undressed the wound and was struck by the decaying smell of the woman's fetid sore. It was as if her previous indifference had disappeared, and try as she might to wash the wound clean and attend to her duties, she found herself completely overwhelmed and sickened by the stench. The smell that had chased everyone else from the woman's bedside had finally seized Catherine and made her recoil in horror, too. But then, instead of giving in to her own weakness in the face of the disgusting stench, Catherine found herself furious: how dare she put her own disgust before the care and mercy she owed this woman? How disgusting must she herself be, to show so little charity to one of God's creatures?

See, this is why she's always been Matt's favourite. A lesser person would have prayed for forgiveness or rationalized away their own weakness. Not Catherine. In repentance, Catherine took the bowl of water in front of her, full of blood and pus from rinsing the woman's open sore, and drank from it. After the first horrible sip of putrid water, she felt a calm wash over her, and it was as though she were drinking straight from the wound in Christ's side.

She drank the bowl of water down, and it was delicious.

* * *

He eats and eats and eats and eats before he goes to Karen's, so he'll have enough energy to be eloquent and chatty and funny and so he'll be able to snake-charm Foggy and Karen out of worrying. He'll wave his fork and make funny jokes and distract them, so he can poke at his food all night and not feel an ounce of desire to eat any of it because there won't be any hunger chewing at his stomach.

He's convinced that, if he can eat as much as possible and get himself as full as possible, stomach distending from white rice and steamed cabbage and carefully-prepared steamed corn, then this night will go fine. He's even worked himself up to eating pineapple, the first real, prominent flavour he's managed in weeks and the sharp tang feels like Heaven, almost, after weeks of bland mushy inoffensiveness. He savors it, slowly and carefully: sweet fruit sugars coating the roof of his mouth and a slight, tastebud-numbing tingle at the tip of his tongue. He swallows it down and he feels briefly normal.

He dutifully works halfway through the pile of food in front of him, scooping and spearing and doing his best to scrape the bottoms of every plate, when he gets the taste of unfamiliar shampoo and a sharp tickle at the back of his throat and he realizes there was a human hair hiding somewhere in his steamed and boiled and triple-washed meal and he doesn't have time to talk himself down before he's pushing himself out of his chair, knocking it backwards onto the floor in his rush to vomit into his sink.

He's been trying hard lately and it should be easier now, none of these symptoms ( _symptoms_ , he thinks, almost laughing out loud) should be this acute or sharp or _present_. The overload should already be starting to recede (should have started to recede days ago, maybe weeks ago - this is the longest he's ever lost control of his sense of taste) but it doesn't.

Still: he doesn't hear about the case as much - it doesn't assault him as often, popping unexpectedly from car radios and TVs left on all night on his block. He's forced himself to wedge out a small bit of space from his other life, the one spent at night when the city is a steady, reverberating echo of sleeping heartbeats, wrapping itself around him and reminding him how much he owes. He hasn't been going out at night as much - he wants to, wants to so badly, even just to work out his fear and his tension and his guilt by stopping a mugging, interrupting an assault, putting at least a few things right (by beating the shit out of someone who deserves it, sure, but he's not going to feel too guilty about the trade-off). But he's been consciously trying to stay in: Foggy has started to call him at odd hours just to make sure he's home (which is annoying, sure, but strangely sweet - he does his best to eat his stubborn pride and be home for those calls), and the stab wound in his side has become more worrying, which is something very strange for him, something very foreign to admit to himself because he's never really thought of any of his injuries as worrying before, but the stupid thing insists on busting open at the seams every time he stretches or bends and he tries his best to baby it, patting at it every night with alcohol and gauze before, God forbid, it can get a chance to start weeping and festering. Claire would be so disappointed, and he already promised her he wouldn't let the damn thing open again.

"Come _on_ ," Matt hisses, his grip tight on the edges of the kitchen counter. He spits into the sink, hand pressed solidly against the stitched-up stab wound. He wills it not to split as he gags again, stomach muscles spasming up-down as a bubbly thread of spit and bile comes up his throat again. "Come on," he murmurs. The cut doesn't reopen, though - there's no tiny tear of delicate skin, no penny-tang rush of blood up his nose - and for that, he's grateful. Matt runs the tap and cups his hands under the flow, splashing cool water onto his face. He cups his hands again and rinses his mouth. One more mouthful of water and he gargles his throat clean. The cheap strawberry shampoo taste fades away, disappearing down the sink with the rest of the meal.

He sits back down at the table and tries again.

* * *

He can tell from the hallway that Karen's made tuna casserole and it's the most beautifully unpretentious thing he could have imagined her making. Still, the smell gets to him - intensely, in fact, and he has to chew hard on the inside of his cheek to keep his expression in check as he approaches her door - but it's overridden by the intense love he feels for her, spurred on by the warmth of the trapped oven heat that whooshes across his face as soon as she opens her front door.

"Hey," she says with a smile, peeking around the door at him. "Glad you found your way here."

He crooks a smile back at her, _of course I haven't totally already been inside your apartment_ , and nods. "I got turned around and had to ask a stranger on the corner for directions. But I made it in one piece." The helpless blind-guy schtick feels cheap but he pulls it anyway.

"Hey!" Foggy bellows brightly from her couch, beer in hand. "Wilkommen. Bienvenue."

Matt takes a deep breath and steps through the threshold (he tries his best to do it confidently, not like a dog being led into the vet). He plasters a smile on his face, a warm and comfortable one, and says, "You beat me here."

"I considered standing outside your front door to make sure you came, but I figured that might be a little overbearing of me," Foggy says. Matt's mouth twitches, just a little, before he barks a laugh because he doesn't know what else he's supposed to do. ( _Be cool_.)

"Potentially overbearing," Matt says. He waves a paper-wrapped bottle at them, "I had to pick up wine, anyway - I hope it's good. If they sold me some Barefoot house red at fancy French prices I'm going back there to give them a piece of my mind."

He can sense Karen, awkwardly watching their exchange from a distance, letting out a held breath and uncrossing her folded arms. She laughs and her posture softens a little. She promises: "We'll be your backup."

"Your muscle," Foggy agrees.

Karen laughs again and takes the bottle from Matt's hand. Examining the label, she assures him, "It's definitely French. It looks expensive? Maybe?"

Matt knows that already - he only has to lightly run his fingers across the embossed label to know it's the right wine - but nothing softens up a room like a self-deprecating blind joke. He feels like he's won a point in whatever awkward conversational tennis match tonight's going to inevitably turn into.

She adds, "It'll perfect for tuna casserole - which we're having, by the way."

They laugh, comfortably, and it's familiar and okay and Matt thinks maybe he can make it through the night without throwing himself out the window.

"We should eat," Karen announces.

* * *

Matt's developed certain skills over the years: how to use leverage to throw someone twice his bodyweight, how to predict a punch from the creaky sound of a miniscule shift in muscle. How to use skillful conversation to avoid taking a bite of food.

"How's your research coming?" Matt asks, fork hovering three inches from his mouth. He makes a good show of appearing distracted and sets his cutlery down, leaning in towards Karen.

"Oh," she says around a bite of food, sharing an obvious glance with Foggy (she turns her head straight at him to share it, which Matt's vaguely grateful for - sometimes it's nice when people forget propriety in front of him because they're so used to his blindness, it gives him a leg up) before nervously wiping at her mouth with a napkin. "That. Right, uh. Some leads - not much. There are a lot of possible bad dudes but nothing concrete."

"Hunches?" Matt asks, and he knows he's being too obvious but seeming too eager about the trafficking bust is less nerve-wracking than the idea of tinned tuna in his mouth. His stomach rolls with anxiety and he's suddenly so angry with himself for being so confident, so sure he could wiggle out of eating in their presence. He should have just canceled.

"Well, a few," Karen says, reluctantly. "I've been using downtime at the office to sneak over to the library and go through microfiches and I've noticed some trends. A few people keep showing up in photos shaking hands with Zotov, over and over."

Matt listens carefully, making sure his expression is neutral, curious. It seems to work, because she adds: "He seems really close with quite a few politicians. You remember Poloni? He ran on the public school reform platform last election? He's been popping up - not sure what Zotov would gain by bribing him, unless he's renting out other people's kidnapped kids to get his own into the right PS. I'm mostly just keeping a lookout for patterns, any names and faces coming up more often than normal. There's this one guy, Marius Wurth?" _There it is._ Matt's fist tightens around his fork as she continues: "He's a councilman. He popped up a few times, and the further I went digging the more connected they appear to be." She shrugs, taking another bite of food and chewing it slowly. The sound, _squish-click-squish-click-gulp,_ makes Matt's skin crawl and he has to press his nails into his palms to keep his expression steady. "Anyway," she sighs, "there's a lot of shoulder-rubbing with a lot of sketchy-looking people and it's hard to get a solid lead."

She and Foggy share another stupidly obvious glance. They're having a moment, one of those moments that mean you've been left out of an important conversation and everything's already been decided for you. Until this year, Matt can't remember ever having been left on the outside of one of those shared moments with Foggy.

"Plus," Karen adds lightly after a beat, "I think we're better off letting this one be. It's picking up a lot of speed in the media and Foggy's got that friend on the force - he said it's, y'know, their primary focus right now. All hands on deck."

The weight of all the conversations they've had behind Matt's back settle into the spaces between her words and poke and prod at him. Matt just nods, sullen and only half-heartedly trying to hide it, and stabs at his food with his fork.

 _Mushroom soup's slightly out of date - it has the chalky smell of separating milk powder and cloying vegetable oil and he can smell the gentle wisp of manure from the ineffectively machine-cleaned mushrooms._ _Nothing like cow shit in your mouth when you're trying to smile and nod politely over dinner conversation. His senses are tingling - buzzing - enough that if he really tried, if he sucked it up and spooned a big, gooey mouthful right onto his tongue, he could probably guess exactly how many cows' digestive systems had contributed to this meal._

Foggy's knee pointedly brushes his own under the table and Matt snaps out of his daze like he's been slapped.

"This is delicious, Karen," Foggy says. "I haven't had tuna casserole in, like, a decade." It's clear and enunciated Foggy for: _you're not eating, not like normal, and I'm on to you - but I'm not going to make a scene unless you make me._ Matt quirks the corner of his mouth. _Let's not do this right now._

Karen doesn't seem to notice. She blushes and ducks her head, embarrassed: "Thanks. It's an old family recipe but I'm pretty sure my grandma stole it off the back of a soup can."

"They could torture me - iron pokers and a strappado and everything - and I'd still never give up your secret," Foggy promises.

"Well, I don't know who in their right mind would torture you for this recipe in particular but I appreciate your loyalty."

And they all laugh, again, and Matt takes a bite of his food, a big heap of noodles and tuna and crumbled potato chips, feeling oddly like a captured spy biting down on a hidden cyanide pill: calm and resigned to his fate.

* * *

Matt vomits in the alley outside of Karen's apartment: ribs compressing and heaving and creaking, trying to squeeze every last bit back up his esophagus, back over his tongue and through his chapped lips. Tiny pieces of tainted food trap themselves in the spaces between his teeth and in the pockets of his gums and he spits and spits trying to get it free of it. He gags and retches until his knees are shaking, hands braced against them, and he has tears running down his forehead as he's doubled over, trying to let gravity help him empty himself out.

The scent of rat shit and sour, melted rotten meat in the alleyway are an effective emetic, too.

 _Clean is empty is clean is pure is clean._

Still doubled over, he slams a fist into the brick wall and plants it there, grinding the flesh of his knuckles into the grit to steady himself. _Stop_. Still heaving and choking, Matt does his best to suck in a shaky, deep breath. _Stopstopstop._ It's one thing to lose control of his senses: it's another thing entirely to lose control of his thoughts.

 _"It's unacceptable, is what it is."_ The cane is there, weighty and solid and real behind him: tap-tap-tapping a warning against Stick's palm.

Matt's skin twitches, the hairs on the backs of his legs pricking up with old memories of harsh beatings. Punishments for hesitation, punishments for missed punches (punishments for the punches he caught with his jaw, too). He suspects more than a few were dealt out just because Stick didn't cope well with boredom. He can't help but feel, though, deep in his bones, like he always deserved the worst ones. Not just because he had done the wrong thing or said the wrong thing or moved too slowly in a fight - of course he deserved those punishments, too. But the ones that were dealt out because there was something intrinsically weak about him, something dirty that could only be cleaned out of him through pain and suffering, because those were the only way Stick could possibly ever teach him to fix those parts of himself; those beatings - the neverending slaps of Stick's cane on the bottoms of Matt's feet while he pressed his cheek into the floor, frozen with pain and trying his best to keep still, to keep from crying out - always came because he'd lost control of himself.

 _"You're thinking about giving up, Matt. I can tell. I know you know I can tell. And thinking about it is every bit as cowardly as going through with it and deserves the same punishment."_

 _"You're really doing your best to prove you're a waste of my time."_

He would lay on the floor and close his eyes and submit himself to the white fire of the beating and he would be sure, just as his eyes started to defocus and flutter closed from the pain, that he could feel Saint Catherine's hand on his forehead.

* * *

"Do you wanna come over tonight and watch a movie or something? Oh - _or_ , best thing ever: they just added audio description for SVU on Netflix - we could have a marathon. You know how Olivia Benson does things to me."

"I don't wanna sit on a couch with you while Olivia Benson _does things to you_ ," Matt says. He makes a face, even though Foggy can't see him.

"God, Matt. Gross. Be an adult."

"You set yourself up for that one." Matt shrugs, shifting his phone in the crook of his shoulder. "And I hate SVU."

"You're weird," Foggy says matter-of-factly. "Everybody likes SVU. Alright, well, I just finished up at the gym, you wanna meet me for lunch?"

"We could do that." Matt takes a deep breath. "Or we could meet up later - drinks and then a movie? I feel like there's a two-week post-incident window to show my face at Josie's after puking on her floor - you know, to march in there and really _own_ my own embarrassment - otherwise we can't ever go there again. The gap is closing."

"That's probably a law, huh. You gotta set the narrative for your own puke so nobody else can."

"I think it's how it works."

"That's funny," Foggy says, but he doesn't laugh. "So that's a no on lunch?"

Matt inhales, trying to prepare a gentle excuse, but before he can breathe out Foggy's already talking again without waiting for a response:

"Can I come over?"

Matt doesn't know what to say - not because the answer could be anything other than _yes_ , but because it's not a question Foggy's ever asked him before. Not like that. Foggy always just shows up, or he _announces_ rather than _asks_ , or he makes an entrance without knocking. He doesn't ever ask permission to drop in.

It makes Matt's skin itch.

"Come over," Matt says lightly, nodding into his phone, because he doesn't want the question to be a question.

* * *

"You want a shawarma?"

"Not really," Matt shrugs, tensing.

Foggy tosses the plastic bag onto the kitchen counter. "Yeah, I know."

It's a test - an easy, obvious one - and Matt's already failed. He presses his nails into his palms and wonders if it would be too obvious of him to immediately change his mind and say, _Actually, you know what, I'd love a shawarma_ , and he knows how stupid it'll sound but he's desperate to sidestep the conversation that's bubbling in the room. He opens his mouth but Foggy cuts him off before he can speak.

"You're not eating, are you?" Foggy asks, so plainly that Matt stumbles backwards a step out of shock even though he knew very well it was coming.

"Just cause I don't want to eat that?" Matt points to the food on his counter - the hot, pungent smell is quickly invading the rest of the air and he nearly chokes on it. _Garlic sauce garlic hummus garlic garlic garlic with dead animal on the side._ "I'm eating." Matt frowns. "You've seen me eat, I don't know why you'd even say that."

"Hmm, yeah, okay, sure." Foggy runs his hands through his hair, pacing back and forth, retracing his steps over the same four-foot strip of floor. "Except when I see you eat, it's those weird little packed lunches or else you'll spend, like, two hours eating a banana and guzzling water like you're trying to trick yourself into feeling full."

"I ate at Karen's."

"Mhmm," Foggy hums. "You played with your food like a little kid until you realized I was staring at you. What is this, Matt? Tell me this is you just, like, giving up food for Lent?"

It's not a real question. He's deliberately being a dick, and Matt bursts out a laugh, involuntarily, half out of shock and half out of offense and he doesn't even want to dignify the question with an answer but he sighs and, trying to parry the dickishness and deflect, says evenly: "Lent ended in April, Foggy."

"Right, well. You would know that, wouldn't you," Foggy shoots back. "So this, this food thing - it isn't, like, some kind of Catholic repentance thing?" The question is so outlandish that it makes a small part of Matt want to sock him in the jaw, his hand briefly forming a fist before he shoves his hands in his sweatpant pockets. Maybe Foggy doesn't mean for the question to be so ridiculous, though, because he takes a breath and his voice sounds weaker when he says, "I don't know how these things work, but maybe you could explain."

"It's nothing like that," Matt insists, pinching the bridge of his nose, but it's only half-true, maybe less than that, because the longer this goes on Matt's beginning to realize he's not really sure _what_ this is anymore - it's become something harder to pinpoint, like _can't_ is morphing into _won't_ right in front of him and there's nothing he can do except submit to the tide. _This is stupid,_ Matt thinks. _This is so stupid and I can't believe we're having this conversation._ He wants to say it out loud, but reconsiders.

"You sure?" Foggy asks.

There's a heavy silence between them, almost a dare.

Matt takes the bait. "I'm not sure what you're implying."

"Of course you know what I'm implying. You're running around at all hours of the night trying to bust open this case with your fists alone - I mean, _look at you_ , you think I can't see that split eyebrow? Or the bruise on your forehead -" Matt's hand reaches up automatically. "Yeah, that one."

"I ran into a door," Matt shrugs.

"Oh, fuck you," Foggy says softly. "Don't. Just… don't, okay?" He pushes his hands into his pockets, mirroring Matt's posture. "You gotta - I just, look: I think you did an amazing thing, Matt. You saved a lot of lives and you gave those kids a future they might not have had without you busting in there and kicking ass. I would do _anything_ to go back in time and really, fully support you on that move, and sometimes I think that maybe if I had it would have made a difference for that little boy." He rubs a hands over his face. "I don't know what I'm trying to say. I guess what I'm saying is: you did a good thing, a noble thing, and those people are gonna get theirs without you putting yourself in the crosshairs trying to get revenge. Have faith that that's gonna happen, you know? It's over."

His heart picks up a strange bit of speed and Matt can hear Foggy's hands fidgeting in his pockets, all rustling fabric and nails picking at cuticles.

"You're keeping something from me," Matt says. A statement, not a question.

"I'm not." Foggy shakes his head.

"You can tell me, or I can go ask Karen. You know she's a worse liar than you are - and you're a shitty liar to begin with." It's the truth, and Foggy knows it.

Foggy shrugs. "I'm only a bad liar because you have supersenses. To everyone else, I'm a great liar."

"Stop deflecting, Fogs."

"I'll deflect all I want, because it doesn't matter," Foggy says, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter, and I don't want to fuel this self-destructive Catholic Boy fire you've got burning inside you right now."

"Can I beg one thing of you, Foggy?" Matt groans. His head is pounding - he knows his blood sugar is low because he hasn't managed to eat much today, or the day before, and it's making his head swim a little and his heart feel like a hummingbird and it's all combining to make his protests feel incredibly pathetic. He rubs at his temples, trying to massage some clarity back into his brain. "Can we just please stop tying everything back to this idea you have of - of my so-called Catholic guilt? Seriously."

"Yeah, yeah, man. Alright. I just think…" Foggy begins. He rubs his forehead, a frustrated tic, and shakes his head. "I just think you've kept enough secrets from me as it is. I think we're past the secrets now, okay?"

Matt's hands are shaking. He concentrates a little and realizes Foggy's are, too. He asks, softly, "Are we really going to have this talk?"

" _Yes,_ " Foggy says emphatically. "Yes, we're going to have this talk, because I'm worried about you. You're a mess."

Matt barks a laugh. "I'm not a mess _._ What does that even mean?"

"Come on, man." Foggy takes a shaky breath. "You've dropped so much weight so fast I'd be afraid to even guess how much."

"Humor me," Matt challenges. ( _Twelve pounds, six ounces_.Obviously Foggy is exaggerating, because Matt sincerely doubts Foggy can tell he's lost much weight just by looking at him. Twelve pounds is _nothing_. Twelve pounds is not a big deal.)

"Oh, come on!" Foggy shouts, throwing his hands in the air. "Do you seriously have to make this as hard as possible? Do you really have to fight me on this? This, _and I think we both know what this is_ , has gotten to the point where you can't expect me to just sit here and not say anything. That would make me a bad friend, Matt, and I am not a bad friend. I'm your best friend, and right now I'm trying to act like it."

"I'm just stressed."

"You're not just stressed," Foggy shakes his head, "because if you were just stressed I wouldn't be making such a big deal out of this."

Matt presses his lips together into a sharp line. They stand, squared off and waiting for the other to flinch, before Matt can't take the tension anymore - the smell of nervous sweat and the sound of vibrating skin. He wipes a hand over his face, exhausted, and hops up onto his kitchen counter, his feet kicking nervously at the cupboards.

"So what do we both know this is?" Matt asks.

Foggy doesn't even flinch. "Like I said: you're not eating. On purpose, maybe - probably. You keep lying and sneaking around and acting like touching anything that's not raw vegetables will kill you. I don't know what you want me to call it, man. I just know how much you're scaring me."

He wasn't expecting such naked honesty, not like that, and Matt blinks hard - once, twice, trying to fight back the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.

"And maybe you're scaring yourself, too?"

Matt looks up, frowning and quirking the corner of his mouth at Foggy. _Don't be ridiculous_. But it probably looks comical, anyway, combined with his red-rimmed eyes and he hangs his head again, focusing on the sound of his heels bumping against the cupboards. Kick, thump, thump. "I'm not."

"Starving yourself or scaring yourself?" Foggy presses on.

Matt cocks his head at him. Seriously?

"Answer the question."

Matt shakes his head and shrugs. He feels strangely like a little kid again, hanging his head as he's being interrogated by a nun because he'd misbehaved somehow. "These are all very leading questions. You're a lawyer, you should know better." It's petulant and he knows it and Foggy's cheeks heat up a few degrees out of frustration. But Foggy just sucks in a breath and Matt can tell he's talking himself out of giving him hell, counting backwards in his head until his blood pressure drops enough that they can resume the conversation without it withering and dying.

He thinks, idly, that Foggy's trying not to blow it.

The thought is strangely comforting.

"Do you remember," Foggy says softly. Matt can hear the hard-soft sound of teeth gnashing against flesh as Foggy chews the inside of his cheek. "You remember back in school? How scared I was for you?"

It takes Matt a few moments to find his voice. Answering out loud, the act of putting words to thoughts and setting free this shadow he carries around in his chest, means acknowledging the possibility that _yes, this is real_ and _yes, this has happened before_ and _yes, it's maybe a problem._ He's not sure he's ready for that. If he'll ever be ready for that. (The embarrassment is one thing, but that's not what he's worried about. Really, it's that letting go of his secrets has always felt strangely like letting go of close friends.)

He settles on a concommittal: "Yeah." Yes, he remembers the scared waver in Foggy's voice, like it's yesterday, the way he'd tried to keep calm and light and unalarming. Truth be told, it runs through Matt's mind more often than he'd like to admit. The memory - that shaky confrontation tinged with salty tears on his tongue and the sound of Foggy's voice breaking, all nerves and carefully-chosen words - sits on his chest like a boulder. It's been so long since that conversation that Matt had almost convinced himself it'd never happened at all. He could pretend that Foggy had forgotten, or that it was all a strange dream.

"Alright, so, do you _really_ want me to accost you with pamphlets again or would you rather skip that part?" To his credit, Foggy says it kindly. Warmly.

Matt laughs in spite of himself and wipes at his running nose. He's given up on trying to swallow back his tears and he just lets the inevitable happen. "Okay, let's skip that part."

"And we can talk about this like two reasonable people? No more vague, guarded-language bullshit? Just honesty?"

Matt cocks his head. It's as good as a 'maybe,' but Foggy soldiers on.

"Will you talk to me about it?" Foggy asks.

"I don't think I can," Matt says, shaking his head and wiping a hand across his eyes. And it's true - the idea of talking to Foggy about it paralyzes him. Weakness is not a desirable quality in a friend or a business partner and even though he's shared so much of his life with Foggy, and the idea of sharing any of this - the food stuff, his own lack of control, Stick. He just can't.

Neither Foggy's pulse nor voice suggest he's hurt by it. "Therapy, counseling, _something_ ," Foggy says. He just lays it out there without pretense, as if he might as well be flopping a dead fish down on the table. "If you can't talk to me, if you can't talk to Karen, talk to _somebody_."

"Ha," Matt murmurs. "Very funny."

"Therapy is a perfectly valid-"

"I'm pretty sure, as a rule, Catholics don't even _believe_ in therapy, Fogs. We're practically Scientologists that way." The joke lands even flatter than he thought it would.

"That's not funny."

"You want me to get serious?" Matt's eyebrows knit together. "What good could therapy possibly do me when I'd have to spend half my time lying?"

"But you wouldn't," Foggy counters. "You don't have to lie about _dick_ if you don't want to. It's confidential, and there are other people with the same sort of - I mean, don't you think The Hulk talks to someone once a week to take the edge off?"

"I'm not an Avenger."

"If you weren't so dedicated to your secret identity, you probably could be." Foggy's voice is so earnest that something pinches and twinges inside Matt's chest. Matt rolls his eyes, anyway. "I'm just saying. I don't expect you to talk to me about it - everyone's got their shit, I know that, and I know talking to your friends can sometimes be out of the question. But you gotta talk to somebody."

They sit in silence for a while, before Matt realizes that Foggy is probably waiting for a response.

"I'll consider it," he says. It's the best he can offer. He doesn't want to make another promise he can't keep. He picks at the peeling paint at the corner of the cupboard under him and Foggy shuffles over, carefully, as if he's testing whether or not Matt will inch further away.

"I just think," Foggy says, leaning up against the counter beside him (Matt can feel the heat of Foggy's hip against his cold knee but he doesn't move a muscle - he lets the contact stand, awkward but meaningful). "I think you don't know how self-destructive you're being and I just worry about… about you going full-on martyr. It keeps me up at night."

"Martyr," Matt repeats, barely a whisper. "Hardly."

Foggy shrugs self-consciously. He says, just as softly: "I just need you to be okay."

 _Martyr_. The word replays itself in Matt's mind, and he catches himself mouthing it, feeling the weight and shape of it on his tongue and his lips, and he feels Foggy tense next to him.

"What are you keeping from me?" Matt asks suddenly, tilting his head questioningly.

Foggy shakes his head. He doesn't say anything for a minute, but Matt just waits, listening to Foggy's fingers scratching nervously against the counter and feeling his feet shift back and forth nervously. He waits until Foggy decides on, "Nothing as important as what you're keeping from me."

"Good one," Matt deadpans. "I can hear it in your voice right now and I could hear it in Karen's voice at dinner. Which, sidenote, was really unfair: did you really think that was the best way to go about things? To put food in front of me and wait and see what happens?"

Foggy pushes himself up, sitting next to Matt on the cold counter. "Well - no, that wasn't exactly the plan. Karen wanted to feed you because she's been a wreck, you know, worrying about you. She just wanted to fill you up with hot food and love and send you home with leftovers and try to make a dent in what you're going through."

"Oh," Matt says softly.

"And yeah, Matt, I'm not going to lie: I went along with it because I wanted to see what would happen. I needed to know if it was all in my head, or if the food stuff was actually happening again."

"Okay, you got your answer." Matt's too exhausted to feel as pissed off as he probably should. "My point is, you guys are all conspiratorial together and it's worrying me."

"We're not conspiratorial - harsh, man - we're just freaked out. Even Karen can tell you're too wrapped up in this case and she doesn't even know you're kung-fu-ing around town trying to get answers, or revenge, or _whatever_. I think you forget that she can see over your shoulder when you're obsessively Googling news about Zotov. This is some traumatic shit, Matt, we get that, and maybe we're trying to shelter you a bit."

"Shelter me from what _-_ "

"From shit that'll just make you feel even more shitty! This is, like, prime directive friend stuff: shelter your friends from getting their _shit totally rocked_ by fucked-up situations!"

"This is a guarded-language masterclass," Matt notes.

Foggy is a pulsating field of nervous heat: fire-hot, sweaty palms and armpits and glowing ears and cheeks.

"Yeah," Foggy agrees. "And? Come on, Matt. Don't think for a second I'm trying to patronize you or give you any of that 'for your own good' bullshit, because you _know_ I think the world of you. You're probably the most competent person I know - you're competent enough for the both of us, sometimes. But I think your judgment is a little cloudy right now, so I'm trying to be careful with this stuff. Careful enough for the both of us."

" _Foggy_."

"Fine! Fine, but you have to promise me, Matt. You have to promise me you're not going to do anything destructive or dangerous or harmful, or whatever _._ I'm not just talking about beating the shit out of some bad dudes - I mean, yes, don't go out tonight to beat the shit out of some bad dudes because I really wasn't lying when I told you the NYPD are busting their asses on this case. But I need you to please not let this information become… you can't let it become a reason to punish yourself. I can't live with that, you know?"

Matt slides down off the counter, slides his back down the cupboards and sits on the floor, his knees drawn up to his chest like a little kid. All of a sudden, he feels the need to make himself smaller.

"Just tell me," he whispers. "Like a Band-Aid."

Foggy's hand drops down to his side, his fingers threading through Matt's hair for a millisecond before he pulls his hand back and plants it on the edge of the counter, pushing himself off and sliding down next to Matt. He nods and takes a deep breath.

"They found a note with the body - with Colin. A message. Brett was on-scene, he..." Foggy trails off, before clearing his throat and starting again: "These are really sick fucks, Matt. Sick, vindictive fucks. I already regret this Matt, just forget -"

"What did it say." Matt can hear his own voice but he doesn't recognize it, it sounds tiny and weak and he clears his throat, his vocal chords thick and sticky from crying.

"Matt," Foggy pleads.

He finds his own voice, his real, adult voice, and he says: "Tell me."

The pace of Foggy's heart shifts - to lie or not to lie. He's weighing his options, but Matt can tell that he settles on the truth: "It said something like, 'We can always get more.'"

"Meaning kids?" Matt whispers.

"Yeah." Foggy nods. He wipes his sweaty palms on his knees.

"But there's more than that, isn't there?" Matt says simply. His hands are shaking and he squeezes them in the space behind his knees, clenched tight between his calves and his thighs.

"Yeah." He chooses his words carefully, his voice stumbling and halting: "The message was addressed to 'The Daredevil.' Some kind of… grand gesture."

" _Gesture_ ," Matt repeats, arms wrapped tightly around himself. He digs his fingers into the sides of his ribcage, nails pressing through the cotton of his t-shirt. "A gesture _,_ " he repeats, his head falling forwards to rest on his knees and his kneecaps pressing into his eye sockets. "Oh my God."

"Hey," Foggy murmurs. "Hey, c'mon."

He places a warm hand on the back of Matt's neck.

"It's tough-guy lunatic posturing. It doesn't mean… It doesn't mean _anything_ , Matt, I promise you, okay? Just like if the cops got there first - if the note was addressed to them, it wouldn't for a second mean what happened to Colin was their fault. Just like it isn't your fault - just like it has _never_ been your fault. I know I keep telling you that every five minutes," Foggy adds, "but I feel like you need to keep hearing it."

Matt says nothing. He just leans into Foggy's shoulder and focuses his ears and tries to pinpoint the furthest possible sound he can hear:

 _A bird, chirping and happy-sounding blocks and blocks and blocks away, its song so piercing and high and pure that it cuts through the crowds and the traffic and the din of the subway._

For a moment, it feels like being somewhere else.

"I love you, man," Foggy whispers.

Matt can feel the heat of his breath brushing the top of his head and he loses track of the bird's voice, lost to the immediacy of Foggy's heartbeat.


	11. Chapter 11

Foggy leaves and Matt spends the next half-hour stumbling around his kitchen, shoving anything and everything he can find into his mouth: saltines and brie and cold baked beans and apple juice (so pure and sweet it makes his teeth ache). He vomits and eats more. Vomits and eats and vomits and eats until he's leaning over the sink, shoving food into the space between his molars and cheeks and chewing despondently, saliva stretching from his bottom lip to the drain, chewing and coughing and gagging and chewing until his senses hit again and his stomach heaves.

Then he sits on the floor and wonders if this is fixable.

At this point in his life, he knows well enough that sometimes life just _changes_ \- a car accident, a chemical spill, a rigged boxing match. Sometimes it just gets worse and the only thing you can do is deal with it. Because some bad things are forever.

He knows this as certainly as he knows the shape of his own name in his mouth and, strangely, the thought brings him comfort.

Because, if his sense of taste has been out of control for six weeks, maybe it could stay like that (stuck, wrong) forever, and then maybe he could just sink into it and wear it like a down coat: an all-consuming protection from the rest of the world.

Maybe, he decides, it's alright that he's able to list all of his consumable foods on his fingers and toes. Maybe it's better that everything that passes his lips is clean and easily digested and doesn't leave any waste to be taken up by the fat deposits under his skin.

Just like being blind is _a fact_ , he's certain that this relationship with food could become _a fact_ , too. More facts: not every day is going to be a good day, and the world owes him nothing. This is just another thing to work past, to work in concert with, so that he can move on, move forward with his life.

He works all of this out in his head, a debate-club back-and-forth, mouthing the arguments to himself alone on the kitchen floor.

He wonders if this is fixable, but he also wonders if it matters either way.

* * *

 _He remembers footsteps behind his back. A hand on his shoulder. He remembers knowing, so acutely, that if he fights back it'll be worse than if he just freezes like a rabbit and lets it happen. He remembers breath on the skin behind his ear, hot and rancid._

 _He knows now, just as he knew in his heart then, that if you allow things to happen to you, you're not allowed to be sore about them afterwards. If and when they come back to haunt you, you've just got to nod towards the memories in recognition like old acquaintances you've long since lost touch with, then swivel your head forward again and keep walking._

 _Y_ _ou and your past might run into each other more and more often, at the grocery store or late at night in the back of a cab, in moments you thought you were alone in the quiet, but you've just got to just nod and move on with your life. Because anything else, anything less, is self-pitying and cowardly._

 _He chose not to fight back, and so he carries that fact with him, alive and delicate like a sparrow, in a hollowed-out space beneath his ribs_

 _with his head held as high as he can manage._

* * *

He tries to wait it out - to _have faith_ , like Foggy asked, that the guilty will be found and have what they deserve brought down on them like hellfire - but he can't wait any longer. He has to do something.

Anything.

Something.

 _We can always find more._ He feels the phrase wiggle through his brain, slimy and dirty, fifty times a day and each time he has to clench his fists and wait for his gag reflex to relax.

There hasn't been any forward momentum in the case in ages - not according to the media, at least, though they might very well be under a gag order. Probably are. Still, Matt spends every morning combing through the news online, listening hard for any tiny cracks and fissures in the case, praying that some lead might lazily be let slip. He looks for morsels of info in the comments sections, too, hoping that something useful might be found interspersed between the hundreds of heartfelt statements of parental outrage and cries for vigilante justice, but there's nothing at all. No names, no leads, no hunches.

He's developed another, more urgent morning ritual, too: scrolling through all of Amanda's online accounts to make sure she's still posting, updating, blogging, anything. Desperately looking for any indication that they haven't gone after her. (He tries not to qualify the thought with "yet," because the idea makes his fingers vibrate and his chest get so tight he can't breathe.)

It's obsessive and he knows it, but he can't stop himself: every morning, before he can even think of going through the motions of the rest of his day, he has to make sure she's still alive.

He hates how easy it was to find her: a quick search based on her address (overheard from two floors up as she directed the cabbie), combined with her first name netted him eight different possible Amandas in her area. Cross-referenced with the New Jersey White Pages, he found her within fifteen minutes.

All of her accounts are unprotected and totally unobscured from anonymous prying eyes and, sure, it's what let him find her quickly and lets him check up on her every single day from his dummy accounts, but it also makes his palms sweat with anxiety every single time he opens one of her profiles and finds he can access everything.

 _Do you have any idea how easily you could just be dead in a ditch somewhere? Or dead in a harbour somewhere_? his brain forms the thought like bubbling acid. _We can always find more_.

Skimming through her Facebook for the third time in one day, Matt scratches, hard, at the inside of his forearm and thinks for a minute. Maybe he could ask her for help - she knows faces, she knows places, she might also know names. Considering it, he chews at the inside of his cheek before slamming his laptop shut.

No, he decides, it's a stupid idea - so, blatantly, _obviously_ stupid. Reckless. Selfish. The very last thing he needs to do is draw her back in. Who the fuck is he, to elbow his way into her consciousness and remind her of what those pieces of shit did to her? _Give her space, let her try to heal, give her space, don't fuck this up._

Anyway, he already has enough information to get a step closer to Zotov.

Thanks to Karen's instincts and Colin's loose-lipped piece of shit junkie parents, Marius Wurth is about to have a very bad night.

* * *

The place smells expensive. Obviously it's expensive: Forest Hill colonials don't tend to run cheap. But this place is something else: it smells like real, old money. Full-grain leather furniture, oiled mahogany, deep impasto layers of oil paint and actual silverware. None of that nouveau riche crap - this place is the real deal.

Which is a pretty good indication Matt's about to break into the right house.

He can tell from the yard, crouched in the bushes like a large, suspicious possum, that there's only one heartbeat in the house: slow, middle aged and unhealthy. Combined with the rasp of mucus-filled lungs (a sustained crackle, a bit like Rice Krispies, with every exhalation and inhalation), he guesses the guy's a smoker with an early case of COPD.

Good. _Fucker._

The wife and kids are away visiting her parents in Idaho; one of many facts he gleaned from a week of reconnaissance (that is, taking the train to the 'nice' part of Queens after dark to hide in the bushes and shiver).

For such an extravagant home, the security system is laughable. A couple CCTV cameras whirring in the corner and an alarm system from the mid-nineties that nobody ever bothered to hook up. He makes sure to give the camera overlooking the patio a thumbs-up on his way through the rear window (he's opted for his trusty black t-shirt and mask combo: it's easier to get across town without wearing head-to-toe red body armour, and on camera he just looks like a common crook).

He creeps up the staircase, feeling out the steps for creaky boards. Hundred-year old staircases can be loud as freight trains at three in the morning, superhuman hearing or not. He makes it to the top of the stairs and listens again to make sure things are still going to plan. A strange part of his brain thinks it's funny, thinks maybe making it to the top was easier because he's a fair bit lighter now, just muscle and bone and reflexes like a gymnast.

He's been trying. He really has. Ever since his conversation with Foggy, something in his chest has been compelling him to try harder, like a thread pulled through his skin and tied tight 'round his sternum, yanking on him every time he does the wrong thing.

( _The wrong thing,_ meaning not eating or not eating enough or eating things that are too low in calories - negative-calorie things, sometimes, too, because they're easy to eat, the way they're mostly water and fibrous green vegetal tissue and he can just chew the grassy flesh between his teeth and suck the juice out and it's sating enough that he forgets all about all of the times he's ever felt the need to feel full.)

There's a rustling sound in the master bedroom and the TV flicks on. Matt curses under his breath. It doesn't really matter that the guy's awake - it saves him the job of kicking the piece of shit out of bed. Anyway: this way, he can make a bit of an entrance.

 _POW._

It takes a little more effort to kick the door open than he'd expected (old money can afford nice solid-core oak, apparently), but the effect is satisfying all the same.

"Fuck!" Wurth yells, scrambling backwards under his duvet. "Who the fuck are you? I've got a gun!"

Matt steps through the doorway and nods in his direction. "I'll give you one warning: this will go better for you if you shut up and listen."

The guy's heartbeat betrays him, though, and before he can lunge for his cell phone, charging on the bed-side table, Matt gets there first. He smashes it against the wall matter-of-factly. "You say another word, you move another inch, and I break your elbow. Got it? Nod if you've got it."

He nods, jowls wiggling - he's pissed himself a little, and the smell sends a wave of nausea working its way up Matt's throat.

"I'm here about Mikhail Zotov." He pauses to concentrate and hears exactly what he's looking for: the guy's heartbeat picks up speed. Bingo. Matt continues: "I know you know that name, and that it means you're in deep shit. I know about all the fucked up proclivities you've been satisfying on the down-low. You're a real piece of shit and you know it."

The guy's heart's going faster and harder than it can probably handle, and his breathing turns into a wheeze. He coughs, a wet hack, and then slaps a hand over his mouth, afraid that coughing up a lung might count as speaking out of turn. _Smart pig, he understands the rules._

"Look: I'm not here to punish you for your sins. That'll happen in due time. I'm just here for information." Matt takes three steps closer, leaning over him. "I'm sure you read the newspaper. I'm sure you know Mikhail Zotov's gone off-radar. Where can I find him?" The guy just stares up at him, sour panic-sweat pouring out of him. _Maybe not such a smart pig._ Matt slaps him once, hard, across the side of his head. "That wasn't a rhetorical question, in case you were wondering."

"I-I-I don't know where he is," he babbles, voice breaking like a nervous teenager. "I barely know the guy, I swear."

"Lots of pictures kicking around of you two rubbing shoulders. You seem pretty friendly for a couple of strangers."

"It's just business."

"I don't doubt it." Matt bares his teeth and licks his lips.

The piece of shit huffs, fingers fidgeting in the sheets; he can tell he's trying to decide if the lie he's knocking around in his head, loud as a tin can, will be convincing enough. "I swear, I have nothing to do with any of this. I saw Mikey was wanted on the news, saw all the horrible stuff the police are saying he did. He's a disgusting bastard - _fucking_ digusting, you know? I would never touch a kid, I don't go in for that stuff."

The lie radiates off him in the sour sweat coating his skin (Matt can hear it dripping from his armpits, running in rivulets down his back) and the nervous flutter of his limping, unhealthy heart.

He's still babbling, voice gaining a little more confidence as he explains, "I have a wife and a daughter - I'm a father, man. I love my kid, she's my world. Ever since she was little, she's been my little princess. Horseback riding lessons, soccer practice. She's my angel. C'mon, man."

"I see." Matt says. "Look, I'm in a bit of a hurry. Give me your hand."

The guy nods, a hopeful wiggle of jowls, and holds out his hand obediently. _Alright, maybe a really dumb pig._ Matt grabs hold of it and breaks the guy's ring finger, fast and clean with a sharp snap like breaking a carrot. _God_ , it feels good - Matt's hands are vibrating, and he's desperate to ball them into fists, use them to break the guy's face until he's just swollen meat breathing out of a toothless hole, but he has to bite the rage back. Keep the devil in check. _That is not what you're here for,_ he reminds himself, _that is not what you're here for._ He presses his nails into his palms, little half-moons of clarity, and takes three deep breaths as he waits for the guy to stop moaning in pain like a beached whale.

"What the fuck?!" Wurth whines, biting his lip to try and muffle his grunts of pain.

"I'm not fucking around. I'm happy to break all ten if you keep wasting my time."

"I can't," he huffs, his body hunched over, wrapped tight around the pulsating heat of his broken finger. "He'll have me killed, you know that?"

"I'm sure you'll be fine," Matt says. _Unless you get murdered in jail_ , he thinks, and the corner of his mouth twitches. "You'd be doing the right thing."

They're both silent for a minute. Matt can practically hear the gears turning in Wurth's head. "Yeah," he says slowly, "yeah, I would be doing the right thing, wouldn't I? And then you could leave, 'cause you'd have what you came for?"

"And then I could leave."

Wurth exhales in relief, lungs phlegmy and crackling. He runs a hand over his bald head, slicking away sweat. "I don't know much, but here's what I do know. He has a place in Connecticut. Big place - fountains and topiaries and fancy cars, all that nouveau-riche shit."

"You've been there?"

"Once. He throws invite-only… parties. For his most important clients."

"Guess that makes you an important client."

He realizes his mistake a half-second too late and shakes his head violently. "I didn't - I _didn't_. I just watched, man."

"So why haven't the cops already found the place and ripped it apart?"

"The fucker's in _real-estate_ , he knows how to fudge ownership paperwork. You think he doesn't have twenty creepy little banking gremlins under his thumb who'll misfile or fudge the details for him?"

"Give me the address."

He shakes his head, "I don't know it. The parties, he… he sends cars for the guests. Blacked-out windows, so nobody can see in, but you can't see out either. You just sit and drink your champagne and listen to Bach playing over the stereo until you're two hours outside the city and find yourself standing in front of a fuckin' palace."

"Details."

"Uh," he scratches his head, "big sandstone place with huge windows. The windows are more like glass walls, y'know? A big ugly hunk of steel and glass that looks like it was designed by a crayon-wielding five-year-old. Three storeys, maybe? There's a fountain out front shaped like a bear - tacky Russian piece of shit. Um," he pants, thinking hard, "I remember that the driveway was paved with brick, yeah, 'cause I remember looking down and thinking, who in his right mind would pave a two-hundred-yard driveway with brick? More money than sense. All about showing off."

"Enough." Matt takes a deep breath. He imagines grabbing either side of Marius' head, fingers gripping tight across the seam of his skull, imagines that he has enough strength to funnel his anger up through his torso and through his arms, to twist his hands and rip his skull in two and feel the splatter: skin and hair and nails coated in his blood and viscera. He knows exactly how good the crack of bone would feel under his fingertips. "Does he keep the kids there? Are there kids there right now?"

"I don't know, man. I think he's trying to lay low right now. I doubt it."

"Is it possible?"

Marius snorts, wincing as he tests the range of motion of his broken ring finger. "Of course it's possible."

"Thanks for your cooperation." Matt wants to spit in his eye.

"So we're done now?"

"We're done." He nods. "At least, I'm done. We'll see about the cops." He makes his way to the window and slides it open, yanking the screen from the frame and tossing it at the guy's feet.

"What?" He asks, voice cracking. "What did you say?"

Matt throws one leg through the window and sits on the ledge, half-in and half-out. He listens into the distance. Across late-night televisions and creaky furnaces and swingsets squeaking in the chilly November breeze, there are three sets of sirens approaching from the north.

"I sent an anonymous tip twenty minutes ago indicating that you're a key player connected to the Manhattan kiddie ring. We both know the public is rabid for a bust, and I'm sure they'll make an example out of you." Matt takes a deep breath of night air, the chill tickling at his tastebuds, before adding: "To light a fire under their collective asses and get them here a little sooner, I also did a little embellishment. I told them you might be hiding a kid in your attic, and that you had a _shit ton_ of child porn on your hard drive."

The guy's breath hitches at the last part, and Matt's mouth contorts into a grim smile.

"See," he adds, "I was just guessing about the hard drive, but I was right, wasn't I? I can't say I'm glad, but that was the glue that held this whole thing together, and it's the part that's gonna keep you in prison 'til that heart condition of yours kills you in your sleep. If you don't get beaten to death first. I hear prison isn't too kind to child abusers. I suggest you take the plea-deal." The police are close, sirens blending into a steady air-raid whine. "See you in hell, Marius."

Matt slips through the window.

"You motherfucker!" The piece of shit's found his confidence, screaming into the night air like a lunatic as Matt deftly descends the wall, window ledge to drainpipe to soft garden loam, and takes off down the yard. He can already hear the sirens coming, only six blocks away now - _he cut this one too close this time, but it's okay, he's made it out_ -

"You stupid, stupid motherfucker!"

A shot, deafeningly loud.

Everything goes a chinchilla-soft sort of grey before the pain hits.

And then it all hits at once.

A lightning bolt of pain shoots through his spine, so sharp and so pure that, for a half-second, he loses awareness of everything else outside of himself and he stumbles, insensate and truly blind, before the pain turns into a full-body hum and the world slams back to him. In that moment, doubled over and gasping for air, he knows he's okay: he can feel the pain radiating through the nerves of his spine, right down through the shaking muscles of his thighs and rocketing out of his body in a flash of fire behind his eyes, so he's okay. Pain means he's alive. _He needs to keep going, keep going._

So he keeps running, as fast as he can, between houses, down alleys, through bushes and past plastic backyard playsets.

 _Sirens, squealing brakes. The sound of electronics being desperately smashed into pieces. Yelling, frantic yelling, and the snap-click sound of pistols being released from holsters._

He trips at the edge of a children's sandpit and takes a hard fall, shoulder first into the partially-frozen sand. Panting like a racehorse, he lays there, allowing himself to be soothed for the moment by the coolness pressing into the ache of his back, until he realizes, _oh, sand_ , and pushes himself up to wipe ineffectually at his wound. The cat piss-tainted grit smarts and Matt hisses a breath, pulling off his glove to pick gingerly at the edges of the entry point in his back. He traces his finger around and around it through the stream of blood bubbling out.

"Jesus Christ," he murmurs.

He doesn't quite have the stomach to investigate the exit wound (though, from the air burning at the exposed nerves around the edges of his blown-open skin, he can just about guess the diameter of the ragged hole). With his hands pressed hard into either side of his abdomen in a pathetic attempt to keep himself from bleeding out, he tries to steady his breath and focus, working his way down a mental checklist as his mind's eye flits through his system: kidneys, lungs, liver, stomach, intestines. _No, fine, no,_ thank god no _, no._

It's just a flesh wound, Matt realizes, and he nearly bursts out laughing from relief. Or maybe from blood-loss dizziness.

Either way, he's glad he's not about to die doubled-over in some kid's backyard kitty-litter sandpit.

* * *

"Hey?" Claire's voice is thick and groggy and it's clear he's woken her up with his call. Over the line, he can hear her shift around in bed and flick on her bedside light.

"I'm so sorry," Matt says quickly. "I'm so, so sorry, I know it's late -"

"It's six in the morning, so if you're calling it 'late' I'm guessing you've been up all night. You okay? What happened?"

"I got shot!" He says it more like a kid curiously examining a scraped knee than someone who's been shot in the hip with an actual gun.

"What the fuck, Matt?" Claire says immediately, panicked, her voice jumping up an octave. The sleep drains from her voice in an instant, going straight into red alert. "Seriously, I think it's time you actually go to the hospital? Don't you think? Can I call you an ambulance, please?"

"Nah," he says, shifting his phone on his shoulder to get a better angle on the entry wound in his back. He picks at it with dirty fingernails. "It's just a flesh wound - I mean, the exit wound is kind of impressive. But I think it's okay. No organ damage, and it doesn't hurt all that bad anymore."

He can hear her rustling around, throwing off the covers and pulling on clothes. "Fuck, Matt. Okay, I'm packing my shit, I'll be there in -"

"I don't want to put you out. I'll come to you."

The sound of frantic movement on her end stops, and she lets out a low, shaky breath. "Listen. You're calling me at the crack of dawn to tell me you've been shot, don't be an idiot."

"It's fine," he promises. "It's okay, Claire, I'll come to you."

"Can you get here fast, before you bleed out?"

He wonders if it's terrible, that he's so used to people talking to him in a tone of total resignation. He wonders if it's because he's a great lawyer (that is, professional arguer) or because he's exhaustingly stubborn. It doesn't matter, Matt decides, he's just really glad not to go to the hospital.

Matt winces a little as he pulls a tiny pebble out of the exit wound. His abdomen tenses from the sting and a tiny gush of blood seeps out, trailing down his stomach. "I won't bleed out. Promise."

She mutters under her breath, then warns him, "If you're not here in twenty I'm calling an ambulance," before snapping her phone shut in his ear.

* * *

"Jesus Christ, Matt." She's through the threshold and under him before the door can swing all the way open, easing his bodyweight onto her shoulder and helping him out of the hall and into her apartment.

"You don't have to," he begins, suddenly embarrassed.

Claire shakes her head: "Yeah, I do."

She places a gentle hand on his lower back and leads him towards her sofa, using her foot to kick away blankets and magazines before sliding out from under his arm and lowering him down by his elbows. He tries to grit his teeth and fake it, but Matt still winces as he settles into the cushions.

"Should I start the game of 20 questions now, or?" Her voice his hard to read: she's got a smirk on her face, he can tell by the uptick in her tone, but there's a nervous waver in her throat, too.

"I'm okay," Matt promises.

"You look like shit."

"That might be true."

She crosses her arms and stares down at him before sighing and wordlessly heading towards the bathroom to grab her med kit. Matt's fingers toy nervously with the edge of his shirt. He feels his own weight sinking into the couch cushion, feels every pound he's lost and every pound still clinging to his bones and he suddenly realizes how badly he wants to keep his shirt on.

She walks back into the living room and bumps his knee with her own. "Scootch," she says, and he slides over to let her sit down next to him. She sets the med kit on the coffee table and pulls out a pair of gloves, pulling them on with a snap. "Let's see this beauty?"

"Beauty?" Matt smirks, wrinkling his nose at her. He hooks his fingers under the fabric of his shirt and lifts it up, revealing the still-oozing wound.

"Yikes," she whispers, fingers reaching out to prod at the edges. "Is that sand?"

"I fell in a sand pit right after," Matt explains, hissing as she picks a few grains from around the exit wound with her fingers.

"Excellent," she says, grimly. "Spending the next hour picking it all out piece by piece will be lots of fun for both of us. I guess we should be glad that, at the very least, this dude had a tiny handgun. And that the bullet isn't lodged somewhere in your body cavity, 'cause then I'd have to drag you to the hospital for real this time. But to be honest, here, I would really, really like to take you in to make sure you don't have any internal bleeding or organ damage - maybe just this once? Matt?"

"I don't," Matt says quickly, shaking his head. "No internal bleeding or organ damage. No leftover pieces of bullet. It's just a flesh wound."

"I'm semi-convinced you're only saying that to avoid going to the hospital."

"Cross my heart. I have superpowers, remember?" Matt drags a finger in an X across his chest, trying to plaster a meaningful look on his face.

She groans. "Right. Just take your shirt off so I can start cleaning this shitshow up."

* * *

"Hey," Claire says, clearing her throat. "So. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, of course," Matt says. He groans as he shifts to face her. His body is perched sideways on the arm of her couch in an attempt to allow her the easiest access and best light, and the awkward position makes his shoulder ache. "I mean, it hurts, but -"

"No, I mean, have you been sick lately?"

"Sick?"

She leans back and he can tell she's looking him over, taking in the big picture, and he curls in on himself in an attempt to hide.

"You've lost a lot of weight," she says matter-of-factly. He tries to protest but she talks over him: "I've seen you shirtless enough times to know that you've dropped - what, twenty pounds? Don't lie to me: if you can hear my bones grinding together from three feet away then I know you can tell when you've lost a ton of weight."

He shakes his head and holds his hands up in a placating gesture. "I've lost a little weight."

"Matt," she says. She stares at him, hard, and he feels his skin prick up under her gaze. "You look like hell."

"Well, now you're just being rude." He smirks at her. It's a lame attempt to distract her and play it off, but she doesn't smile back. She just stares at him silently for a moment longer, then shakes her head and picks her forceps back up off the surgical drape-covered coffee table before leaning in to pick more sand out of his wound.

"I don't mean to get all medical-care-provider on you," Claire says softly, quickly and carefully picking the last few grains out of his skin, "but I think we've already crossed that bridge. So, and please don't fight me on this, I just want to acknowledge that you look really thin. Worryingly thin. And I want to tell you that I'm worried about you. Even more than I usually am."

She wipes at the wound with iodine, the pain in his side shifting from an exposed-air burn to a chemical sting, and starts threading a suture needle. Matt can tell her hands are shaking: it takes her a few tries and she curses under her breath, teeth grinding together in agitation. She gets it, finally, then whispers a warning before she pierces his skin, pulling the burst edges closer and closer together with a half-dozen skilled stitches.

The silence is uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than the sharp poke of steel and the tug of silk thread, and Matt clears his throat. His voice wavers as he says, quietly, "My friend, the one you met - you know, while I was passed out. He already tried to give me this very same talk."

"Oh?" she asks, mildly. He senses the questioning tilt of her head and he can tell she's trying to play it cool, trying to let his words come unprompted lest she spook him out of saying what he's about to say. He's touched by it, and squirms a little at the intensity and unfamiliarity of the gesture.

A foreign, previously-undiscovered part of himself wants to give her the truth, to present her with it like a strange, ugly gift.

"It's not really what it looks like," he explains, stumbling over his words. "Would it be enough to say I have ultra-sensitive tastebuds to go with the rest of my ultra-sensitive senses?"

Claire's hands pause for a moment before resuming their stitchwork. Her words come slowly, deliberately chosen one-by-one: "I'm sorry, it's just… Look: I'm not trying to put you on the spot or embarrass you. To be blunt? It looks like you're starving yourself and I need to make sure that you're… not. Doing that." She ties off one last stitch and cuts the thread. They sit in silence as she tapes gauze over the wounds, giving a cursory examination to the rest of his partially-healed nicks and grazes and stab-wounds.

"I don't know what to tell you," Matt whispers as her fingers press gently around the edges of the stubborn stab-wound in his side.

"What if you just tell me the truth," she suggests, softly. They sit in silence for a moment, and Matt suspects they're both sizing each other up, wondering which one of them is going to put up the bigger fight. He figures it's probably Claire, so he starts to piece together the scattered elements of a reasonable explanation.

"It's a long story."

"Lucky for you, I've got nowhere else to be."

Another long silence.

He listens to his own breaths, sore and careful, and her fingers tapping nervously on her thigh.

"You could say I had a _mentor_ growing up," he begins.

* * *

It turns into a long story, a longer story than he'd intended and he tells her more than maybe he _wants_ to tell her, or maybe more than he _should_ tell her. But he tells her, because she already knows his secrets and he isn't going to worry about a few more right now. He starts with the accident, because starting anywhere else would be starting in the middle of the story. She nods and cups her hands over her mouth, but she doesn't interrupt. He tells her about his dad. About the fight.

He gets to Stick, eventually. Goes on and on about their training, how Stick taught him to fight and taught him to use his other senses to make up for his eyesight, how he'd developed new senses in the process, and maybe she's assumed that he's forgotten what story he was supposed to be telling. But then he tells her about the ice cream and she seems to understand.

"I mean, it's kind of a cool party trick," he says, even though it's not that funny. She gently takes his hand in hers and rubs her thumb into the soft flesh at the centre of his palm. He drifts away for a moment, lost in the sensation, in the sore comfort of the gesture, until he can form the words he needs to say in just the right way. "One time," Matt says slowly, "one time, he put lye in my chicken soup. Just to make sure I was paying attention. I should have smelled it, or taken a tiny taste first - that's what I was supposed to do, because when we ate it was always about smelling and tasting and being tested, not about eating - but I was so hungry and we'd been sparring all day and I just wanted to eat some lunch, you know?"

It comes out wrong; too pathetic, too helpless, too victimized. He wants to explain to her that it was a mistake, see, he should have known, but her thumb's already picked up speed, rubbing a hole in his palm. He crooks the corner of his mouth into an embarrassed smile, like, _What a dumb kid, right?_ But in response, Claire just exhales hard through her nose, a frustrated kind of huff. He can sense the heat rising on her skin.

"Sorry," he says, because he's not sure what else to say, and he pulls his hand from hers.

"No, don't say that. Don't say sorry." Claire shakes her head. Her heart is beating quickly and her tone is angrier than he thought it would be. "He - he poisoned you? To, what, prove a point to a little kid?"

Matt shrugs, leaning forward to press the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Yeah. I mean, I guess it worked. He only had to do it once. After I got out of the hospital - the lye burned my throat up pretty bad - I was careful. I knew better after that. Didn't matter if my throat was so messed up I couldn't talk for a month. Or if three of my ribs were so bruised I had to sleep on the floor for a week because the mattress pressing into them was too painful. Everything was always a lesson."

"Jesus Christ," she says, softly. Her hand touches his knee and he pulls away reflexively. "Sorry," she murmurs, folding her hands in her lap. "They didn't throw him in jail?"

"It's pretty easy to lie about accidentally swallowing poison when you're a blind kid." Matt shrugs. "I wasn't going to sell him out and throw away everything I'd already worked so hard for. Everything I'd already gone through." He pauses, rubbing the back of his neck and trying to avoid her gaze, which he can feel burning into his cheeks and the tips of his ears. "I don't think the nurses ever really believed me. Drinking sweet-smelling antifreeze is one thing, powdered lye finding its way down my throat is something else. But I insisted it was my fault and it's not like they could prove it otherwise. So they let me go."

"Back into his arms." He can hear the click of tendons against joints as she squeezes her hands into fists.

He shrugs. "Well, as far as anyone knew, it was back into the orphanage's arms. But, yeah. Back into their arms, safe as houses."

She tilts her head at him, chewing at her bottom lip. "So," she prompts.

He wipes his sweaty palms on his thighs and tries to smile at her. "So, I don't know. I guess I learned my lesson tenfold."

"What does that mean?"

It takes him a minute to try to put into words what goes on in his brain: assembling purely sensory data and transmuting it all into a condensed verbal shorthand. He's never explained it out loud and he doesn't know where to start. _Claire-speak_ , he thinks to himself, _turn it into Claire-speak_. He ends up with an explanation that's as simple and concise as he can manage.

"Sometimes, something goes screwy in my head and I can taste absolutely everything and there's nothing I can do to shut it down," he says. He can feel her watching him closely, her mouth parted slightly. The warm air from her lungs brushes across his burning face and makes it feel even hotter. "Every contaminant - dirt, hair, mold - is like an air raid siren in my head. I panic and I can't keep it down."

"And is that what's going on with you right now?"

 _Mostly_ , he wants to say. "Yeah," he says, instead. "It usually doesn't last this long, maybe a week or two. I just deal with it until it goes away again. It always goes away, eventually."

"How long this time?" she asks.

Quietly, he admits: "Almost six."

"Six weeks? Matt." Her tone is verging on pitying and he wants to slide away from her, wants to pull his fucking shirt back on and brush this conversation away but she clears her throat and her voice goes back to normal before he can make an escape. It's the familiar, Claire-version of professional: honest, to-the-point, unpatronizing. "We need to deal with this," she says, firmly.

His blood runs cold and his ears go hot as he realizes she must be talking about dealing with the story he's just told her ( _why would you tell her that story when you could have made something up?_ ), is only a half-truth. He left out so many parts, the parts he can't say out loud, and why tell half of the truth when you can tell none of the truth and keep things simple? _Stupid._ He shrugs at her, helplessly, and fumbles for his shirt on the ground.

 _You've fucked it up and she's going to pity you now_ , he thinks, and another memory flashes quick like lightning in the pit of his stomach (Stick doubled over in a mock belly-laugh: _Did you just call me 'Dad?' - oh, it slipped out? It was an 'accident?' Don't confuse my pity for affection, Matt.)._

"We'll figure it out," she adds lightly, her heart a nervous tremble under her chest. Her cheeks are hot - _she's embarrassed for you,_ he thinks, _that must be it_ \- and he can hear the thump-thump-thump of her heel bouncing up and down on the carpet. "I have an entire stockroom of nutritional supplements at my - very light - fingertips. We'll figure it out," she promises, her hand reaching out, halfway bridging the gap between them before she pulls it back again.

 _We'll figure it out_ , she mouths to herself. She thinks he can't hear it.

* * *

 **Hi friends! Thank you for sticking with this strange little story (even though I'm a slowpoke who takes forever to update). I cherish each and every one of your reviews, thank you so much for your feedback. It really means the world to me.**

 **As always, you can come hang with me on tumblr where I'm shmazarov.**

 **More to come...**


	12. Chapter 12

His hand covers his fork, the cool metal of the handle pressing into his sweaty palm, but he can't make himself close his fingers around it. His bones are wooden, too old and dried out to bend without snapping.

 _You're hungry,_ he tells himself, _you know you're hungry._ Except he doesn't really know if he's hungry. It's no longer an insistent ache in the pit of his stomach, he no longer feels his stomach grumbling and rolling against itself, hissing and needy and begging for something to consume. No more acid at the back of his throat or muscle twitches in his eyelids, his jaw. Now, not eating is strangely… easy. Comfortable.

It's like forming any new mundane habit, like flossing - once you don't eat for long enough, consistently enough, it becomes as natural as anything.

Matt stretches his fingers straight out and clenches them tight. Open, closed, open. Then he picks up his fork and spears a chunk of apple from the plate in front of him. Lifting it to his mouth, his hand pauses for a barely a millisecond. The apple hovers in front of his nose and he inhales: sharp, bright and sweet, lightly floral. Organic. No pesticide residue, scrubbed long enough and skinned carefully enough to avoid any chance of contamination. He places it in his mouth and lets it sit on his tongue.

The juice seeps across his tastebuds and cold, long fingers wrap themselves around his biceps from behind, squeezing and digging their nails into his flesh. Hot breath on his ear, voice low and dangerous: _Do you think you're winning? You're nothing but a slave to your own gifts._

Matt shakes his head and crushes the apple between his teeth, pressing one palm into the centre of his forehead, hard pressure against his third eye. "Fuck that, you old hypocrite," he mumbles out loud as he chews, shuddering as he tries to shake the fingerprints from his shoulders.

Another lesson from long ago, learned from the fetal position on a cold, cement floor:

 _The sooner you learn to accept things, Matt, the sooner you'll be worth my time. Your dad's dead? Accept it and move on. You've got a knife stuck in your side and a broken elbow? Accept it. Move on. Rip the other guy's throat out._

Acceptance does not have to equal giving up. Acceptance can be strength. Not everything has to be struggled against, not everything has to be fixed and made neat and tidy again because some things just happen, some things just are the way they are.

 _Right?_ He tells himself as he slowly chews another piece of apple.

 _Right._

* * *

The bullet wound required more energy than he'd expected, and so he'd taken two guilt-ridden personal days to try and get himself into functioning shape. Two days of sitting on the floor, his brain focused yet unfocused, letting every bit of spare fuel (both mental and physical) zero in on his stitched-up flesh.

"Ran into a real big door," he explained to Foggy over speakerphone, sitting cross-legged in the middle of his living room, furniture pushed against the wall to give him enough space to concentrate. Complicated meditation work requires wiggle room; he can feel the weight of anything within a few feet pressing in on him. He added, "A big, solid oak door."

Foggy groaned. "Was this maybe the kind of large, thuggish oak door that, say, packs a knife and/or gun?"

"Who knows? I'm a lawyer, not an interior designer." A reluctant chuckle on the other end of the line. He pressed a hand to his side, wrapped in gauze and tape, and set his jaw to keep from hissing. "I'll be back on Wednesday. Can you please tell Karen I've got food poisoning so she doesn't bring me a get-better cassorole?"

"Yeah, yeah," Foggy said. "Can I come by?"

A pause.

"Don't worry, I just need to rest up." Not a 'no,' exactly. But not really a yes, either.

"Don't go out and get your ass kicked so much and I won't worry so much." Foggy cleared his throat. "Alright. Just. Get some sleep and get some food in you, okay?" A mumbled stream of syllables rushed together, so quick that Matt hardly parsed them out before Foggy signed off.

Since their awkward talk in the kitchen have been hit and miss, really - partly because he feels like he has to tiptoe around Foggy, now, now that he has some inkling of what's going on. He can't just pretend everything's fine and Foggy won't let him, which is all the more… well, he _wants_ to say it's frustrating, but that wouldn't be fair and he knows it.

It makes it more complicated, though, to have someone else's wants for him projected onto him, because he doesn't _want_ to eat, not really, and having Foggy want it for him just makes things… more complicated. It should be encouraging, comforting to know that Foggy wants him to be okay. Wants him to eat. And yet somehow it's the opposite. Under Foggy's concerned gaze he feels like a rebellious child, like he's back in the convent, whispering to his Dad under the covers when he's supposed to be asleep.

But now it's Wednesday morning and his bullet wound has stopped oozing, so it's time to man up and get some work done. He slides through the front door of the office and winces as both Karen and Foggy's heads snap up to look him over and take in the state of him - he can practically feel their eyes searching his face, prodding him.

Karen left him a voicemail on his second personal day, echoey and mumbly like she'd locked herself in the bathroom to make the call: _Hey, Matt. Hope you're doing good. If you need me to run any errands, or, you know, if I could bring you some groceries, anything you need… let me know_. He feels guilty for not calling her back, now, in the way she snaps up from whatever she's going over with Foggy at the conference table and gazes at him, chewing nervously at her bottom lip. There's a silent shuffle of feet as she steps forwards one step, then backwards, then looks to Foggy for instruction. He nods at her.

"Hey," Karen says finally, gently, and he can hear her muscles tense - she's holding herself back from rushing towards him.

"Bud," Foggy says, warmly. "Welcome back."

"Hey," Matt nods in their direction, pulling off his snow-dampened wool coat and feeling for the coatrack. "Which one of you is gonna get me up to date on all the work I've been slacking off on? 'Cause I'm in the mood to be worked to the bone."

The joke lands, thank God: Foggy exhales, relieved, and Karen laughs. She comes over to take his elbow and lead him to his desk and Matt, gratefully, lets her.

* * *

He drags himself around the office, pacing in and out of each room as he listens to monotonous legal docs narrated by his screen reader. The exit wound in his side is smarting, and sitting down in their piece-of-shit scavenged furniture pulls at his skin in just the right way to make the anchor points of his stitches feel like pinpricks of fire. It's normally not something he'd mind, honestly, but the sensation is incredibly distracting when he's trying to keep focused on dull-as-dirt legal lingo and so he weaves through the office, fingers tapping rhythmically along with the screen reader's awkward cadence.

Making another slow pass past Foggy's office, his cane waving slowly, carelessly in front of him, he can sense Foggy's irritation. Foggy's pen pauses its scratching and his shoulders tense in a frustrated creak of muscle as he leans back in his chair and waits for him to take his pacing back into the other room.

"Sorry," Matt says automatically, crossing the threshold and pulling out his earbuds. He reaches out to feel for a chair out of habit and eases himself into it, tossing his tablet onto Foggy's desk. "I'm distracting you."

"It's cool," Foggy says, but Matt can hear the relief in his voice. "I mean, I think you've worn an inch-deep trail in the floor from all the pacing but, y'know, it's cool. Wanna talk about it?"

"About Schumer v. McCormack?" He taps a finger on his tablet.

"About what's eating you." It's a particularly unfortunate choice of words and they both wince as soon as the words leave his mouth. To his credit, Foggy soldiers on: "I mean, we haven't talked much since..." Matt makes a face and Foggy pauses, his fingers fidgeting in his lap.

"Yeah," Matt says quickly. "Yeah, I know we haven't. I'm sorry. I've turned myself into a bit of a ghost lately and I'll make it up to you."

"You don't have to make it up to me but it would be nice to see more of your face, y'know?"

Touched, a hint of a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth before Matt wrestles it into submission. He nods once. "Alright. Can do."

"You name it, man. Drinks, movie night, uh, a freakin' picnic in the park? We could take a very romantic baking class?" It's clear from Foggy's voice that he's smiling, too: a hopeful little lilt in his tone, the confident shot of energy he gets when he's gaining momentum, using just the right words to tease out what he wants. He's lawyering. "I'm serious," Foggy continues, laughing, and Matt finds himself catching the moment, too, coughing out a chuckle. "I'll buy you tickets to the goddamn ballet if you'll just hang out with me. I miss you."

The air in his lungs pushes itself out with a final heave of a laugh and the gunshot wound goes from a low moan to a throbbing shriek of pain. Matt hisses in a gasp of air, clutching at his side out of reflex, and slowly breathes back out.

"Yeah man, of course," he says, nodding, trying to keep his expression straight. "You don't have to bribe me with Swan Lake. We'll get drinks tonight, the three of us."

Darkly, Foggy notes, "I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest that your sick days and current ouch-face are related to that pedo busted in Jersey the other day." He pauses. "You know about Swan Lake?"

"Everyone knows about Swan Lake. And please lower your voice."

Leaning in close over the desk, Foggy whispers, "Are you hurt bad, man? The papers said there were shots fired."

"Nah." Another jolt of pain, less intense this time - he presses his palm tighter over the epicenter and concentrates. The pulsing heat reduces to a tremble, radiating outwards and diffusing into something more manageable. A piercing scream shifting to a stage whisper.

"Is that _nah_ as in, 'I'm hurt but not too bad' or, 'I'm hurt bad but I'm not going to tell you about it'?"

Matt taps his nose. "Yes."

"Yes what? You're dodging the question."

"Can you blame me? It's good exercise."

"Mhmm. Funny guy."

"That's why you keep me around, right?" Matt smirks.

Foggy drums his pen against his legal pad. He shifts around in his chair, scratches the back of his head, taps his heel against the ground. There's an awkward tug at the edges of his voice as he asks: "You taking care of yourself?"

 _You eating?_ The implication clangs around the inside of Matt's head, deafening as a gong. He clears his throat and eases himself back out of the chair, one hand grabbing for his tablet and the other feeling for his cane.

"Sure I am." Fight-or-flight adrenaline tugs at him, dragging him backwards with an urgency so swift his feet can barely keep up. Sirens in his head, buzzing in his fingertips. Dry mouth, tight throat. "I'm going for a walk," he says, not even a little bit evenly. He clears his throat. "A little fresh air will do me some good."

Low, urgent, Foggy insists: "Matt, we have to talk about this sooner or later, you know that!"

Matt ignores him and plugs his headphones back into his ears. That way, he can at least pretend he can't hear Foggy muttering after him as he grabs his coat and heads out the door.

* * *

ANONYMOUS TIP LEADS TO DISCOVERY OF KIDDIE PORN HARD-DRIVE

Matt flicks through the news as he circles the block, listening to brief snippets of articles with bombastic headlines and no actual meat. The arrest he'd spoonfed the cops became big news fast but, in the days since, nothing seems to be moving quick enough to suggest the force knows what to do with what he's given them. Dozens of front-page headlines litter the major news outlets, but they're all vague enough to belie the fact that they have strong suspicions but that nobody actually knows _shit._

Two blocks away from the office, he passes a kebab cart and the smell hits him so hard he might as well have been suckerpunched in the stomach. The smoke gets in his mouth, up his nose, carrying with it the grease and the char of the meat. In an instant it coats his tongue and he stumbles sideways to try and get away from the source.

"You okay buddy?" a man asks, and Matt senses him reach for his elbow to help straighten him out and lead him away from the curb, away from traffic, but Matt waves him off with a muttered, "Fine, thanks," and shakes his head to clear the taste from his brain.

He clicks ahead through the news, looking for something useful.

LOVING FATHER TURNED MONSTER, ALLEGED PEDOPHILE HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT - CONNECTIONS TO HELL'S KITCHEN RING SUSPECTED

Nothing but pulpy, editorialized bullshit.

There's an obvious difference between when information is being withheld from the press and when the police are drawing blanks and scrambling to seem effective in the public eye and the situation, in this case, is really fucking obviously the latter. The incompetence on display - after all the perps, all the information he's placed directly into their hands, the police have come up with nothing? It's shameful. A handful of minions and a rich insider in custody and they can't get a single one to open his busted mouth and squeal. The number of cell phones, laptops full of potential leads, and yet they haven't made a single step forward that he hasn't blazed the path for himself.

Another headline, more sensational news with no meat.

MANHUNT CONTINUES FOR MIKHAIL ZOTOV: STINGS ACROSS NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY PROVE FRUITLESS

It's been week after week of anguish, spending every waking day terrified that he's going to hear of another tiny body pulled out of the river before Zotov can be found, another gesture meant to send a message loud and clear (that is, _stop looking_ ). But there's been nothing.

It should be comforting, but it's not. It makes perfect, aching sense.

Children are valuable commodities. It's dangerous and expensive to smuggle a kid, to pay off a couple of drug dealer piece of shit parents, to steal a runaway off the streets. When the risk is so enormous, you don't toss away the spoils just to prove a point to the fuzz. Instead, you tighten your grip on your valuable commodity.

He can't make them wait any longer. There are still kids waiting to be rescued.

Matt knows this for certain, deep in his bones, just as he knows how satisfying it will be to hear the sound Mikhail Zotov makes when he breaks every last one of his limbs over his knee.

* * *

Matt gets back to the office twenty minutes later, his brain no clearer than when he left, to find Karen alone in the office.

"Foggy's meeting some potential clients," Karen says brightly before he can ask. "Lunch meeting thing."

"He didn't mention it," Matt says, trying not to sound put out, and he feels his forehead wrinkle. He does his best to smooth his expression into something conveying surprise instead of, well, annoyance. It's clear that Karen catches it, anyway.

"Oh, no," Karen says quickly, "I don't think he purposefully, you know, didn't invite you. I think they're his cousin's in-laws or something, one of those borderline-blackmail mandatory relative favor things, and he didn't want to make you waste an afternoon listening to family gossip."

"Ah." He half-believes it.

"But hey, actual clients with actual money that Foggy doesn't mind taking," she repeats, laughing, and between the quiver in her laugh and the shift in her posture it's all a little the-lady-doth-protest-too-much but he lets it slides. "Anyway, I don't know about you, but I didn't pack a lunch today. Since we're gonna be the two losers left behind, would you be into grabbing lunch with me today? Food truck or diner food or whatever. Your pick."

She sounds so eager and so genuine and God, he wants to. He wants to make her smile and feel like she's done her job, done the right thing by getting some colour in his face and some food in his belly, but instead he has to listen to hear heart go from an eager hop-skip-jump to a disappointed thump as he stammers, "Oh, uh, thank you for the offer. But I can't, I'm so sorry. I have lunch plans."

"Oh," she says awkwardly. "Of course, yeah. No worries." She curls in on herself, just a little: head dropping a half-inch, arms wrapping themselves protectively around herself. She nods and pushes her hair behind her ears and if he didn't already know she was hurt he'd be fooled by her easy tone. _Cool, no problem, all good_.

"Otherwise I would have loved to," he adds, meaningfully, and she shakes her head (her skin picks up heat from her embarrassed blush, and it makes her radiates the jasmine and clean musk perfume hidden under the collar of her dress - a tiny bit of cigarette smoke and whisky, too).

"No problem," she insists, shuffling her paperwork. "I'm pretty sure I'm the only one out of the two of us who's craving Chinese, anyway." She laughs at herself, softly, and he feels like a traitor for breaking his awkward silence by laughing along with her.

* * *

 _Lunch plans_ is not entirely a lie, in his defense.

"You been eating the last couple days?" Claire asks, the moment he settles onto her couch. It's obvious she's staring at him intently, eyes boring into him like lasers.

He shies away under her gaze and nods, feeling like a schoolboy called to the front of the class. Forcing himself to speak, he manages to mumble, "yeah," and cracks a smile at her, an uncontrollable reflex when he feels outgunned and can't lawyer himself out of it: smile, laugh, brush it off - everything's cool, don't mind me.

She presses on: "How much?"

"Uh, I don't know. Some." He shrugs and fidgets with the cuff of his dress shirt. He knows exactly how much: one avocado, a cup of cubed pineapple, two slices of grapefruit that proved to be too overwhelming to eat more, seven spoonfuls of white rice (which was as much as he could manage before he caught a whiff of something fetid from the bowl and couldn't bring himself to eat another bite - it was all he could do to keep down what he'd already eaten).

Hell, if she asked for his weight he's fairly certain he could tell her right down to the gram. But he hopes to God she doesn't ask.

"How much?" she repeats. "I'm not asking to embarrass you, I'm asking because it's important. Just give me a rough ballpark of your caloric intake - did you get a thousand in you, at least?"

 _At least_ is a decent-enough tell, handed right to him, and Matt considers jumping at the opportunity in front of him and saying _yes, of course,_ _at least that much_. But he bites his lip and rolls it between his teeth as he thinks of a palatable answer that's at least mostly true.

"Less than that. I don't know. Four hundred?" He tries to gauge her reaction, bumping up his estimate to be safe: "Five, maybe."

He holds his breath as he waits to find out if it's an acceptable number but, strangely, neither the pattern nor speed of her heartbeat changes, even though he knows he hasn't given the answer she seemed to want.

Claire just nods and runs her fingers through her hair. "Okay," she says. "Thanks for being honest. Let's do something about it, yeah?"

And… that's it? No lecture, no punishment? He tilts his head, curious but wary, as she pushes herself up and walks to the kitchen, grabbing a plastic grocery bag off the counter. Her skin temperature is even, heartrate steady, no perspiration. Why can't he get a read on her? The distinct sound of cans clanking together (four cans - he concentrates on counting them, tracing their shapes and counting them out, _onetwothreefour_ , a brief distraction from the present). They bump mutely against the other contents of the bag: cardboard cartons of heavy liquid and plastic tubs of God-knows-what.

"Got a whole whack of options here." She settles back down onto the couch and starts lining up containers like soldiers along the edge of her coffee table, naming them as she goes along: "We've got: calorie supplement shakes in a variety of flavors for your choosing, coconut milk, protein powder, peanut butter -"

"I can't do peanut butter," he says quickly, holding up his hands. "Sorry for interrupting you, I just... can't eat that."

Blowing out a breath through her nose, Claire shrugs. "Well, you could try," she says, carefully. She taps her nails along the plastic edge of the lid, not impatiently (he knows from her touch that she prefers to keep her nails cut short and blunt and unpainted and he can hear all of it in their _taptaptap_ against the peanut butter, a soft, blunt sort of noise).

He keeps focused on the soft, blunt noise of her fingers as he answers, too embarrassed to focus on her reaction: "There's too much oil in it. It coats my mouth and my throat and I can't keep it down." He pauses, wrinkling his nose. "Not to mention the bug parts."

"Bug parts?" She makes a grossed-outsound and tosses the peanut butter back into the shopping bag with a heavy thunk. "I guess straight-up olive oil is out, too, then?" She sets a heavy plastic bottle of oil onto her coffee table and Matt's stomach turns.

"I can't," he says with a grimace.

"What if it's blended into a shake?"

"Can't blend anything to the point where I can't taste it. I can even taste the residue of oil on your fingers if you've touched it before you've touched my food." He considers it, and adds, "I can taste anything you've touched at all, really."

"I see." She nods and tosses the oil into the reject pile, then hands him a can of supplement from the line-up. "Try this."

He runs his fingers over the paper label, trying to parse it out, but it's too smooth to read. All he can feel is the ridges of the metal can and the weight of the liquid, oozing back and forth as he shifts its weight in his hands. "I, uh," he mumbles. "What flavor is this?"

"Chocolate, but I've also got strawberry, vanilla, and, uh," she spins the other containers to read the labels, "wild berry, which really does taste like berries, kinda-sorta."

"You're really selling me on it."

"Sorry," she says. "Just try?"

He hesitates, tipping the can side to side, over and over again, feeling his stomach start to clench and his pulse quicken. "Can you read me the ingredients?"

"Don't psyche yourself before you even try it."

"Fair enough." The corner of his mouth twitches nervously as runs his fingertip around the rim. "Do you mind if I wash the can first?" She tilts her head questioningly at him, and Matt explains: "I, uh, don't do so well with drinking from cans. I can taste all the hands that have touched it, everything those hands have touched. Dust from sitting on the shelf, how many people's skin has combined to make that dust." He crooks the corner of his mouth into a bleak grin and walks his fingers along her coffeetable, explaining, "Sometimes, if I'm really unlucky, I can taste the paws of the rat that scurried across it in the warehouse."

She makes a sound, something like a sympathetic groan, before swallowing it down and shaking her head, "Sorry. Yeah, yeah of course. I can wash it for you," she holds out her hand, but he doesn't hand it to her, just rolls it back and forth between his palms, steeling himself. "Or would you rather -"

"I'd rather do it," he says finally, nodding. "If that's okay."

"Of course. Do what you gotta do."

Matt nods but doesn't get up. He picks at the edge of the label, peeling it away from the can. "Claire," he says carefully, not quite able to face her. "It's going to make me sick. I already know that."

"Okay," she says simply. She rubs her palms on her thighs and pushes her hair behind her ears and they sit in silence for a long moment.

"But I'll try," he says finally.

She cracks a smile at him and nudges his knee with her foot. "Thattaboy."

* * *

Claire takes a deep breath, hissing between her teeth sympathetically as she crouches beside him in her tiny bathroom. "No good, huh."

"That was," Matt begins, before spitting into the toilet. "That was… a lot of oil and a lot of dairy and someone who works in that canning factory isn't a huge fan of personal hygiene. To put it delicately." The thought makes his throat lurch again and he desperately leans over the toilet bowl, gripping the watertank with white-knuckled intensity.

His ribs ache with the pressure of the dry heave that pushes its way out of his chest, but nothing comes up except acidic mucus which he spits into the bowl, ashamed. He tries to turn his face away from her, to hide the heat in his cheeks and the tips of his ears and the tears he can feel trickling their way down his face, forced out from retching so hard.

"Fuck," she murmurs, gently. Slowly, slowly, she reaches out to touch his back, her fingers millimetres from grazing his spine, but before he feels her touch she yanks her hand away like she's been burned.

Something guilt-like in his chest snaps in two and he wants to tell her it's okay, that he's sorry for pulling away from her, before, when he was telling her about Stick. He wants to make her understand the truth: that it wasn't her fault, that he's not really like that, that he's not damaged like she must think, that he _wants_ her to touch him, that...

But the words don't come out of his mouth, he just stays hunched over the toilet bowl, face hidden, listening to the echoes of his own desperate panting bounce off the bathroom tiles.

Claire stands up straight. "I'll get you some water, Matt, hold on."

He nods and gags, reaching out to brace one hand on the water tank of her toilet as another wave of nausea surges up.

* * *

When he was little, only six or seven, he'd had an imaginary friend named Bruno. Bruno was big and fuzzy, with floppy ears like a rabbit and a long nose like an anteater, one that could wiggle and point. He was his best friend; Bruno would sit with him every day at lunchtime, helping him ignore the other kids and focus on his food, explaining him what ants taste like and how they're so much yummier than peanut butter sandwiches. (Ironically, years later, he knows that it's more likely that the average tablespoon of peanut butter will have a few ant legs suspended in it than not.)

Bruno stuck around longer than most kids' imaginary friends. Bruno was the one thing he was able to keep from his life after his dad died. He rocked him in his arms every night, stroking the hair from his forehead with his long, long nose, and read the Bible out loud to him in the dark of night when all the other kids in the convent were already fast asleep. He used to think how amazing it was that Bruno always knew which verses Matt needed to hear, always the ones he knew by heart and could mouth along with. (" _That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong._ ").

After the hospital - when Stick came back to get him, and things changed. When lines were crossed that could never be uncrossed. That was when Bruno left him.

He wasn't always alone after that - sometimes Saint Catherine would come to him instead in the darkest moments, when he needed someone to hold his hand through the worst of the beatings and the worst of the rest. But his childhood friend never came back, and, yes, he was left alone. But self-pity is useless and damaging and, in this case, he thinks, wrong. Those moments (when he was bloody, or broken, or naked and trembling, with only himself to keep his mind clear and his head held high) were formative. They were the experiences by which he became self-reliant. Independent. Fully-imagined.

(He has to believe that, or else he might not be able to stand it. He has to.)

Memories of Bruno still come back to him in flashes and hazes. Even now, he half-remembers seeing him sitting by his bedside after the lye incident (God, _incident_ \- that's what he can't help but call it). It makes no sense, really, because he was good and blind at that point, blind for years, but he can still see the image in his head clear as day: white, sterile hospital walls, a cornflower blue crocheted blanket, the way the bed dipped where Bruno sat. A mount of brown fuzz reaching out to stroke his hand.

It's funny how intensely real imagined things can sometimes be.

He's never told anyone about Bruno - not even in college as an endearing, pseudo-vulnerable way to make slightly drunk girls realize they want to kiss him. A strange aspect of his nature has always had a hard time letting go of the iron grip he keeps around the secret parts of himself. And now, he feels like he knows for sure: total honesty feels fucking terrible, all shaky and strange, a constant full-body cold sweat.

He wishes he could take it all back, scrub Claire and Foggy and Karen's memories clean, because letting even just the half-truth of what's going on in his body and in his head escape out into the world makes it all so… real. And it doesn't _need_ to be real, not when it can just as easily stay hidden where no one can see it but him and the world can go on as normal.

He wishes he knew what fixed felt like so he could make a map of how to get there, so he could find his way back on his own no matter how lost he might become. Turn left on 10th, hang a right on 45th, listen for the bug zapper hum of the giant neon sign announcing, Congratulations, You're Normal Again.

And then walk right on in like he belongs.

* * *

Claire calls him when they're four rounds deep at Josie's. His burner phone buzzes insistently in his pocket, dragging him out of a mostly-friendly three-way argument. "It's all bullshit!" Matt shouts, slamming his hand on the table and laughing, before excusing himself to duck into the street to take her call.

It's snowing lightly, coating Hell's Kitchen in a light dusting of wet, cold pinpricks. Matt leans his head back and lets the snow tickle his face. His cheeks and forehead feel hot, from the bourbon and conversation, and he knows he shouldn't be drinking on an empty stomach but things are going _well_ in there; Foggy is laughing, Karen is smiling. He's doing a good job at being normal.

"Hey," he says softly, bringing his phone to his ear. "What's up?"

"I've been thinking a lot about this - about everything. And I'm a realist. If this isn't going to work, tell me now and I'll stop torturing you with protein shakes. I'll figure something else out."

He bites his lip and heads around the corner so Foggy and Karen can't watch him through the windows. "You don't have to, Claire. It'll be okay."

"Well, I'm not putting money on your sense of taste going back to normal anytime soon." She takes a sharp breath. "And I'm not putting money on you feeding yourself properly in the meantime."

Her words hit him hard and the silence stretches on - neither of them knows how to move on from her statement. The snow keeps falling and the tip of his nose starts to feel cold, his fingers starting to stiffen around his phone. Matt chews at the inside of his cheek and sniffs, once, before wiping at his face with the back of his hand and clearing his throat.

"Can we please not make a big thing out of this?" he asks, quietly.

"Matt."

"Claire."

He hears her shift the phone in her hands, hears her grind her teeth together. She swallows, hard, before telling him, "You're worth taking care of, you know that right?" Matt chuckles, darkly, briefling dropping the phone to his side before lifting it back up to his ear. "I'm serious," she continues.

"I don't need - I don't know what you think this is," he begins, voice wavering, but he has no idea where he's headed and he breaks off awkwardly, words hanging in the air.

"It doesn't matter what I think it is. Just come over tomorrow night and let me try to keep you healthy, okay?"

Inside the bar, he can hear Karen and Foggy mumbling to each other about him, their voices warm and optimistic ("He seems better, don't you think?" "He's making an effort, I'll give you that."), before Foggy changes the subject back to ordering another round.

The words climb up Matt's throat before he can reconsider them: "And if I said no?"

"Well, Matt," Claire says, her voice thin, "if you said no, that would be really fucking stupid of you."

She hangs up before he can argue.

Matt stands outside for a while longer, frost nipping at the tips of his ears. He presses his fingernails into his palms and focuses on the eight tiny little half-moons of pain. The pain pulls his attention closer, slowly shutting out the yelling from the apartment three blocks over, the radio in the cab two blocks away, Karen and Foggy's conversation just on the other side of the wall. His mental bubble shrinks until it's just him and the sting in his palms and the snow falling on the back of his neck and the world is briefly, mercifully quiet.

A loud noise, sharp like a gunshot, and Matt jumps, muscles tense and ready to react before he realizes it was just the front door of Josie's slamming open.

Karen pokes her head around the corner.

"Hey you!" she shouts, laughing as the snow falls on her exposed skin. "You good? Come back inside!"

Matt pushes himself away from the wall and tucks his burner phone in his pocket, forcing himself to crook a smile as he makes his way towards her. She reaches a hand out to him as he gets close, the warm skin of her palm brushing his icy fingers.

"You know me," he says, taking her hand and letting her guide him through the threshold, back into the glowing heat of the bar. "I'm always good."

* * *

 _(Hello friends. Thank you so much for your patience during this very long wait. I appreciate each and every one of you for reviewing and subscribing, thank you for your kind words and your encouragement. As always, you can come hang with me on tumblr where I'm_ **shmazarov** _. More to come in the very near future, I promise!_ )


	13. Chapter 13

"Hey. Glad you came."

"Hey." He can't exactly return the sentiment; it'd taken him an hour to convince himself he was better off showing up as promised instead of holing up in his living room, ignoring her phone calls and letting the guilt build up in the pit of his stomach.

She'd called him on his lunch break with instructions: _I have an idea,_ she said _, come over around ten, wear something loose and comfortable. And, uh, expect to stay the night, so bring your toothbrush and whatever you need. Don't get weird on me, it'll be fine._

"Well," Claire says, tapping her fingers on the door frame, "come in?"

"Right," he says, clearing his throat, wanting so desperately to stay in the neutral ground of the hallway, his feet planted into the dirty carpet so firmly they might as well grow roots, but he forces himself to cross the threshold. He does it slowly, warily, focusing past her and scanning the room. 

Claire practically reads his mind: "Buck up. This isn't an intervention."

She hooks a gentle hand around his arm and pulls him towards her living room. There are even more cans and bottles on her kitchen counter and he freezes involuntarily with the realization that they're almost certainly more protein shakes and formula and - _Jesus, they're not going to do this all over again, are they?_ There's a metal something in the corner that's never been there before, the shape of which he can't quite make sense of in his mind. Matt freezes, trying to focus on it and track its outline, to form a three-dimensional map of it in his head and parse it out.

"Matt," Claire says, softly. She tugs gently at his arm, turning his attention away from her kitchen and bringing him towards the couch. "You okay? You're practically vibrating." She sits him down and settles onto her coffee table across from him, her elbows on her knees and her hands clasped together in front of her face. If he didn't know better he'd think she was praying.

"What's that thing?" Matt blurts out, jerking his head towards the mystery shape in the corner. He can hear it ringing, softly - the vibrations from the traffic below her window make the metal sing.

"You look freaked out. Hey," she says. "It'll be okay. Look at it this way: if I didn't force your ass to go to the hospital after I dragged you out of a dumpster, do you really think I'm gonna start now?"

He smirks at her, not unkindly, and pushes his hands further into the pockets of his hoodie. "You're being evasive. You sure this isn't an intervention?"

"Well. In a sense, maybe." He can tell she's studying his face and he looks at her questioningly. "So. That thing in the corner is an IV pole." She pauses to read his face. "Do you know what an NG tube is?"

 _Jesus Christ_.

"A feeding tube?" He laughs in spite of himself, equal parts aghast and amused. "Jesus, Claire. No."

"Seriously, hear me out. You stay here tonight and let me set up a tube for you and we can get two thousand calories into you by morning. No taste, no anxiety. Five minutes to get the tube in and then we just sit tight til tomorrow. Easy peasy." She's deadly calm. Her hand finds its way to his knee, a pleading gesture, and he forces himself to stay still and not shift nervously under her touch.

His mouth is dry and he coughs, once, the movement twinging the partially-healed wound in his side, making him groan. "Claire, I don't think-"

" _Matt._ " She cuts him off sharply and his words die in his throat. "I know it sucks, I know it seems extreme, but it's the only way I've managed to come up with to get food into you without triggering your gag reflex. So. Can you please just swallow your pride and let me do this for you? And if doing it for your sake isn't good enough, do it for the sake of all the people watching you practically wither in front of them. And, I don't know, call me tacky, but do it for the people you'll be able to save by keeping yourself healthy. Please?" She pauses, and he can feel the way her fingers are shaking. "I'm scared for you."

Her heartbeat tells him that she isn't lying.

"Look," she continues, bulldozing through the awkwardness building, brick by brick, between them, "here's my reasoning: if we can just bypass your tastebuds and get it right into your stomach, that's half the battle right there. Instead of trying to get a couple thousand calories worth of perfectly-washed, practically-sterile food into you, we can just…" She walks the index and middle finger of her right hand across her left palm. "Just sneak past the guards, y'know? Makes sense?"

He nods belatedly and rasps, "Makes sense."

His fingers are shaking, and he tries to steady them by closing his hands into fists. _It does make sense_ , _it makes all the sense in the world_ , and he knows it, but it doesn't change the fact that something about it makes his skin feel itchy and hot, makes him want to climb right out of it. There's something about shoving a plastic tube right down into his stomach and pumping in liquefied food - that's too easy and cowardly and he resents it. Sometimes you just have to bear your cross, and pumping food up his nose and down his throat is… _not_ that. But she's staring at him with her cheeks and the tips of her ears glowing with anxious heat and he wants so badly to please her, to make her see he's not a useless fuckup.

"We can try," he says finally, because he's been quiet for too long and he can't make sense of his own thoughts anymore. He thinks it's the right answer and he wants to make her happy and quell the nervous jump of her knee and the uneven patter of her heart.

* * *

"You're doing good - a few more inches. Swallow, keep swallowing, a little farther - ok. All good."

The tube is glaringly intrusive, irritating the inside of his nasal cavity and tickling his gag reflex. Logically, he knows it's thin and malleable, but it feels like it might as well be a garden hose; his nose aches a little and he feels weirdly offended by the NG tube's presence, like it should have taken him to dinner before pushing its way down his throat. Heart beating hard in his chest, he realizes his palms are sweating and he tries to wipe them, surreptitiously, on his sweatpants. Matt does his best to slow his breathing down into measured, deep breaths to stop himself gasping like a fish; he hadn't expected this surge of anxiety, and the surprise of it strengthens its hold on his nerves.

(It occurs to him, way at the back of his mind, that Saint Catherine would rather die than be force-fed, but he decides he's _not_ being force-fed. He's letting this happen. He's not sure if that's much better.)

"You ok?" Claire asks.

Her right hand is still resting, half-forgotten, on Matt's jaw, and the warm weight of it distracts from the uncomfortable feeling running down his esophagus. "Yeah." He swallows hard, again, and tries to decide for certain whether or not it's the truth. "Yeah, I'm ok."

She withdraws her hand, leaving a ghost of her heat on his skin, and he feels himself lean into her touch as she moves away to grab a stethoscope and syringe from her medkit.

"Alright. I'm gonna check to make sure it's in your stomach, then we're good to go."

"It is."

"Doesn't mean I'm not going to check." He hears her rip off a piece of medical tape and wriggles a little, unable to bear the indignity of having a tube both up his nose and taped to his face. Claire sighs. "Matt, I have to tape it. Otherwise you won't be able to move around or go to sleep."

Matt groans, but holds still so she can hook the tube in place behind his ear and neatly place the tape along the tube on his cheek. He's pretty sure that all he wants in the entire world is to curl up and die.

The _kill-me-now_ expression on his face must be obvious, because she pats him on the bicep and assures him, "You look great. Don't stress about it, this is everyday stuff for me." The cool metal disc of her stethoscope against his skin makes him jump a little and, after a second, he feels his stomach gurgle as she injects air into the line. "Alright, all good," she says.

"This is so..." He begins, then winces. There are too many words running through his head at the same time: _Unnecessary? Embarrassing? Pathetic?_ Tears prick at the corners of his eyes and he shakes his head, rubbing the sting away with the heels of his palms.

There's no comparison between Claire stitching him up because he caught a knife in his side, and Claire putting a feeding tube down his throat because he's too _stubborn and self-destructive to take care of his damn self._ The former is a necessity. _This_ \- sitting in his sweatpants in her living room, preparing to be force-fed like a foie gras goose and wishing for death by spontaneous combustion. This is just an indignity. He'd rather have his fingernails ripped out.

" _Hey._ " Claire pats his hand and Matt jumps slightly. "Let's just get this show on the road, okay?" She stands up and rolls an IV pole from the corner of the room to the back of the couch and sets to work.

Curiosity overtakes his frustration and Matt has to ask: "How did you even get that thing home? I figured you were just going to hang my feedbag off of a lamp or something."

"Oh no, no, no." She laughs and pats the IV pole fondly. "I borrowed this old guy - and by borrowed I mean stole, obviously - way back in nursing school. I call him Carl, and because of him I've enjoyed the greatest perk of being a nurse, which is never, ever waking up with a hangover thanks to before-bed banana bags. Those aren't so easy to get in when you're drunk, though." She laughs, before adding: "And it's not a _feedbag,_ Matt, Christ almighty."

"What's it called, then?"

She snorts. "A feed _ing_ bag."

He laughs, darkly. "Huge difference."

"You bet."

He can tell she's smiling, and Matt relaxes a little into the sofa. She's obviously trying to keep it casual and put him at ease and at this point - with a tube up his nose and down his throat and seventeen pounds lighter than he should be, there's no point in making things any harder. The tube is already in his stomach and taped to his face, which, he reasons, means he's already a good fifty yards past the point of no return. So he resigns himself to give in.

(Just for tonight, at least.)

"If Foggy knew about that IV trick, he'd make you his new best friend."

"You think?" She laughs. "Ooh, I'll steal your place on the front door and everything. 'Temple and…' - what's his last name?"

"Nelson."

"'Temple and Nelson' - we'll be dirty litigators, making major bank colluding with scammers. They'll slip on the stairs of the Trump hotel, he'll manage the lawsuit and I'll be the medical expert."

"Not sure I can compete with that genius plan, I'll start packing up my desk." The tube goes cold and his stomach does, too. Matt wiggles a little and can't help but reach a hand up to touch the tube, slowly running his fingers along his cheek, following the line as it curves up into his nose and disappears. He pushes his tongue back and feels the hard plastic resistance in his throat and swallows roughly. More _cold_ rushes through the tube, making his sinus throb a little.

"Sorry," Claire says. "I'm flushing the line with water. You okay?"

"Yeah, just surprised me." He pauses. "It feels really weird."

"Yeah, it does," she agrees. She pulls the syringe from the port and stands up, grabbing something soft and plasticky. _Feedbag_ , his brain mutters. "Alright. I'm gonna start you on the formula now. What flavor do you want?"

"Ha-ha," Matt deadpans, but when he's met with silence, he realizes she's being serious. _Oh._ After a moment's consideration, he decides on vanilla because even the smell of the syrupy-fake strawberry will probably set him off.

"Sounds good," she nods, cracking open a metal can with a released-air hiss. "Vanilla it is."

He can feel the vibrations down the tube and down his throat as she works around him, attaching this to that, getting him hooked up. She talks and talks as she starts the flow, probably in an attempt to distract him: "This setup isn't really that complicated, so, like, it's mobile if you need it to be? What I mean is, we don't always have to do this at my place - I know it's an inconvenience for you. I only told you to come over tonight because," she chuckles darkly, "to be completely honest with you? I just didn't want to lug all this shit over to your place only to have you slam the door in my face and have to drag it all back to my apartment."

He frowns at her. "I wouldn't - I'd never do that."

She just shrugs, _it doesn't matter_ , before settling onto the couch beside him. "How we doing?"

Matt shifts in place, the tape on his cheek pulling and tugging, and he wrinkles his nose. The line doesn't feel as weird anymore - five minutes in and it's already starting to feel a little bit less intrusive. Well, no, it still feels _extremely_ intrusive but he no longer feels like he has to hold himself back from ripping it out in a cold-sweat panic.

"I'm okay," he says, finally.

"Okay," she says. From the sounds of it, she half-believes him. "You make sure to let me know if that changes."

"Can do." He pauses, and they sit in awkward silence before he tries, darkly, "So, how was your day?"

She splutters a laugh. "Oh, you wanna banter. Good. Okay." She nods gamely. "My day was interesting. Ever have a guy call you a fucking bitch while you're trying to stabilize his spine so that he doesn't spend the rest of his life with only two functioning limbs?"

Matt chuckles. "Nope, never gotten that one. But, I mean, I stabilize spines all the time."

"I'm sure you do," Claire says. "You've been _stabilizing_ _spines_ all over Hell's Kitchen with your fists and knees. A regular neighbourhood chiropractor."

"My methods are unconventional."

"Mhmm. Unconventional." She pauses. "Before I forget, I'd better take another look at your side, before I forget. I scrounged up some antibiotics to send you home with, but we have to make sure to keep a close eye on it." He can practically feel the wince she makes at the turn of phrase. "You know what I mean."

He slides his hand under the hem of his hoodie, over his t-shirt, and feels the heat of the wound through the bandage and fabric. Barely warmer than the surrounding skin, the wound gives off the gentle nagging, itching feeling of his skin knitting itself back together. "No infection," he tells her, "it's doing fine."

"Either way, I'm taking a look at it before you go," she insists. "Those sutures are just about due to come out. Anyway." She leans forward to snatch something off of the coffee table. "What brand of dumb, late-night talk show do you prefer?"

Matt laughs. "I honestly have no idea."

* * *

Her body is warm beside him on the couch and he falls asleep fast, like being pulled into a riptide. By the time he notices he's far from shore, it's too late to drag himself back.

 _One hand on his shoulder, its fingers pressed into the soft spot above his clavicle and the heel of the palm pressed into the hot skin of his back. A second hand, readjusting its grip on his hip. Rough hands - not deliberately rough, just ungentle. Unconcerned. Hands that might as well be working a machine instead of his body._

 _Hot breath on the back of his neck._

 _Hands, hands, hands. Too many hands to make sense. He moves slowly, trapped under them, trying to get away. Like moving through water: too slow, too slow, and no matter how hard he struggles he can't break free of their grasp._

Matt wakes with a start, sweaty and gasping. His hands dart out, reflexively, to grab for anything he can touch: pilled fabric sofa, crotcheted blanket - where? He can't remember for a few moments, heart pounding in his chest, until his hands find their way to the tube taped to his face and Claire groans in her sleep and it all comes back to him.

 _You're safe. You're in Claire's apartment. You're safe. You're hooked up to a bag of dairy and oil but you're fine._

The meal-replacement formula feels like lead in his stomach, and the weight of it drowns out his other senses. He recognizes the sound of Letterman on TV, the weight of Claire's sleeping body at the other end of the couch, the whirring of her ancient fridge, but his awareness is dull and fuzzy, like he's just caught a punch to the gut and hasn't yet regained his balance. Everything feels faded, overwhelmed by the immediacy of a belly full of sludge.

A memory comes swimming back, hazy but vicious: his dad telling him, "You got a weak breadbasket, boy!," laughing and pretending to land a few hard blows to Matt's stomach. "Pow! Pow! Pow!" Matt would laugh, too, and dramatically moan in pain, collapsing on the kitchen floor like something out of a tacky horror movie. Eight years old and scrappy and desperate to be big enough to spar for real.

His dad was right: he does have a weak breadbasket. Sitting as still as possible on her couch, his stomach feels weak, uneasy. Every time it contracts around the ooze inside it, straining against its walls, he feels his skin crawl, goosebumps spreading across his arms and cold sweat forming at the back of his neck. Claire shifts her weight at the other end of the couch, curled up into a blanket-wrapped ball, and her icy toes sneak under his thigh, making him jump. She mumbles something that he doesn't quite register, yanking her feet back to her side of the sofa.

"Sorry, what?" He snaps his head in her direction and he feels the feeding tube shift at the back of his throat.

"Oh," she says groggily. "I said sorry for the cold feet, I have really shitty circulation."

"No," Matt says quickly. "I mean, it's fine. You can put them back." He pauses. "If you want to." She makes a noise, something like a stifled laugh, and he feels her feet slip back under his thighs, cold as ice. She wiggles her toes for extra effect and he groans.

"I told you they were cold."

His heart jumps a little and he yawns to cover the smile that pulls at the corner of his mouth. "What time is it?"

She leans forward to grab the remote off the coffee table and clicks a button. Letterman freezes mid-monologue. "Almost two. Sorry, I totally passed out - have you gotten any sleep? If you're tired, I can turn the TV off and you can crash."

"It's okay." He shakes his head. "It's nice to have the distraction."

"You sure?" He can hear the frown in her voice. "You look like you could use a little sleep."

"I'm alright."

"Okay." She nods, yawning and stretching her back. "Just in time for round two, anyway. Good timing."

"Wait, more?" Matt frowns. His stomach already feels stretched and heavy, and whenever he shifts his weight the liquid sloshes back and forth like a water balloon. There's not much more room, Matt's sure of it.

"Round two of three, actually." She pulls her feet from under his leg and pushes herself up off the couch with a reluctant groan.

He listens as she works on refilling his formula - the click of a can, unscrewing plastic, fiddling with tubing - and has to hold himself back from _begging_ her not to give him more. Swallowing the panic in his throat, he says, weakly, "That seems like a lot."

The smell burns his nose - fake vanilla, corn syrup, oil - and he exhales, hard, trying to clear the taste building on his palate.

"It's not," she assures him. "Are you feeling uncomfortable? I can restrict the flow so it doesn't drain as quickly."

He nods once, acutely aware of the heat building in his cheeks and in the tips of his ears. "Yeah. Yeah, that'd be good. I'm getting sort of..." _Anxious_ is the right word, the only word to describe the buzzing in his fingertips and the voice in his brain urging him to get rid of it, empty it all back out. He knows that he can't speak that word out loud. It carries too much baggage that he doesn't have the energy to answer for. He settles on: "Bloated."

"You're full," she says matter-of-factly, like, you know, _duh_. But the pressure in his stomach feels alien (almost literally: like something living and wriggly is about to chew its way out of his body). "You've gotten used to an empty stomach, so it's natural that it feels strange. But it'll only take a day or two for a full stomach to feel okay again. Or at least," she says carefully, and he catches a shift in her tone, "it'll feel more familiar."

The truth is that emptiness is comfortable for him, now, more comfortable than feeling heavy and bloated. Every time he dutifully spends an hour at his kitchen table, choking down bowl after bowl of steamed blandness, he feels a thousand times worse than he did when he was empty. The fullness feels wrong, worse than the clean, light feeling of hunger. He doesn't crave food anymore. He doesn't _want_ to feel full.

If he's honest, the moment he fills himself up he loses the spark-like body-mind rush that emptiness gives him. It makes him feel connected to the world, closer to God, not weighted-down by the profane and open to uninhibited communion. Just like the way sound travels faster in hot air than in cold air, the way adrenaline makes everything feel more real, more immediate, he feels his thoughts move quicker when he's empty and maybe it has nothing to do with God, but maybe it has everything to do with God.

"Okay," he says after a while. "I'll try to get used to it."

She leans closer to him and he can feel the gentle brush of her breath across his lips and his stomach twinges, again, not from food-discomfort but a different kind of pain. "Maybe I'm imagining it, but I think you're already getting some of your colour back."

"That's good," Matt murmurs, and thankfully the moment slips past and she leans away, again, dropping onto her end of the couch and pulling her knees up to her chin. He feels something nudging his thigh and he feels for it: worn-down rubber nubs on smooth plastic. TV remote.

"Your turn. Big buttons on the left side change the channel, big buttons on the right side change the volume." She flops sideways and burrows into the couch cushion, feeling around with one hand to yank her blanket up to her chin. "Put on something so boring you'll be forced to fall asleep."

"Be careful what you wish for," Matt says, running his fingers across the remote to quickly map the layout. "I could put on C-SPAN, and then you'll be sorry."

Her breathing is already slowing, shifting into deep, heavy exhalations, and there's sleep in her voice as she mutters back, "C-SPAN is perfect. I could use a nice coma."

"You're on," he says.

He turns the volume down until it's at a whisper, the electric whirr of her ancient TV almost louder than the voices on whatever stupid talk show he's landed on. Two men are discussing a movie he's never heard of, making bad jokes and mugging for the audience, but he's not paying attention to the TV, anyway - he's focused on the way her muscles relax, one by one, as she slips into sleep. He listens to the way the tightness she carries in her spine relaxes, notch by notch, and the tension in her jaw fades, and the way her breathing sounds something like the ocean on a calm night: wave after wave, measured and sure.


	14. Chapter 14

He knew, from the very first moment Stick recognized him for what he was, that he was being offered a chance at everything he wanted: to be more.

The convent quickly knocked any sense of individuality or specialness out of his head, the mindless routines and rules and the uniformity of their drab, second-hand clothes making it very clear to all of them: you are not special. You are exactly the same as every kid here no matter how smart you may be and no matter how snot-nosed or cruel they may be.

You are just like them, because you too are a burden.

And so as soon as Stick came into his life and saw him (really saw him for what he was), Matt was ardently his; he became like an eager puppy nipping at Stick's heels, begging him look at me, look at me. Look how devoted and loyal and good I can be. I can be whatever you want me to be.

He was pushing eleven the first time Stick hit him. It's strange, looking back, that it ever took so long. It wasn't even that bad: a quick crack across the face with the palm of his hand, more loud than painful. It happened so fast he hardly registered it, the flat of Stick's hand ringing loud across Matt's cheek, the sound hitting his ears before the bite of the sting hit his brain.

It was a quick response to a moment of rebellion, Matt refusing to participate in another round of sparring. He wasn't even that tired, or hungry, or bored: really, he just wanted to test the waters a little, to try and force Stick's hand into treating him like more than a student. The strike he got in response was mostly expected, but still it was a shock to his system. It was instant confirmation of the thought that had been tangling its way through his head for months. Stick wasn't looking for a son, he was looking for a warrior. An easily replaced guest.

Anyway. Anyway. The point is: the dreams still come, that night, his knees pulled to his chest on Claire's couch. They creep in more gently, more of a whisper than a scream, but still they come.

* * *

He wakes up nestled half-upright into the corner of Claire's couch to the sound of his phone ringing ("Foggy. Foggy. Foggy.") and the smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen.

The TV is off and it's quiet except for the sound of Claire shuffling around in the bathroom, opening cupboards and clicking open bottles. The smell of jasmine body wash and creamy-sweet conditioner wafts under the bathroom door and he can hear her humming softly to herself as she towel-dries her hair.

Matt reaches forward to find his phone, buzzing on the coffee table, and swipes to accept the call.

"Hey." He takes a deep breath, sitting up straight and wiping at the sleep in the corner of his eyes. There's dried drool at the corner of his mouth and he wipes at it too, self-consciously. His skin feels clammy, like he's verging on feverish, but he suspects it's just the fact that she likes to keep her thermostat north of 70 ("Bad circulation.") and he's got two blankets piled in his lap that weren't there when he fell asleep.

"Hey," says Foggy. He pauses and clears his throat. "Glad to hear from you. I was, uh, kind of hoping you'd call me to hang out today because, see, I have the whole weekend off. And I knew you had the whole weekend off, too, because. Uh. We work in the same failing law office."

A pained smile pulls at the corner of Matt's mouth and he nods into his phone, "Uh huh." He fiddles, absently, with the edge of the tape on his cheek, peeling it up and smoothing it back down again. On the other end of the line, he can hear Foggy clear his throat again. "Well," Matt says, "I don't know if there's any ballet going on at nine on a Saturday morning, but I think you should let me hang out with you anyway."

Foggy coughs a laugh into the phone. "Really dude?" He sounds pleasantly surprised - at least, he definitely sounds surprised. A pang of guilt tugs at him. "I'd like that."

Untangling himself from the blankets, Matt drags a hand across his stomach: it feels rounded, heavy, offensive. It pushes against the waistband of his pants almost insistently, like he's got a parasite in his stomach wiggling around and making room for its spawn.

It occurs to him how badly he'd like to get the fuck out of Claire's apartment right this second. It occurs to him, too, that there's a fairly secluded alley behind her building where he could get rid of this oozing bloat without being interrupted.

"Alright, well, I'm a little tied up right this second," Matt says lamely. He fiddles with the NG tube, feeling his way up to see if he can unhook himself without calling Claire into the room, "And I gotta take a shower, but I'll pick you up at noon?"

Foggy's smile radiates in his voice. "You're on."

Matt tosses his phone down beside him and starts to reach a second hand up to fiddle with the plastic thing holding his end of the tube to the feedbag-end, but then the bathroom doorknob twists and Matt snaps his hands away and tucks them in his lap.

"Hey," Claire says warmly. "You're up. I have to head to work, but I figured I'd let you sleep in. You want a coffee?" She pads into the kitchen and grabs mugs out of the cupboard - mismatched ones, from the sound they make on the kitchen counter.

Is it weird how much he loves the fact that she owns mismatched mugs? he wonders. Probably.

"Thanks," Matt nods.

"Cream? Milk? Sugar?" She gestures in his direction with one hand as she pours him a mug. "That round's pretty much done, I'll unhook you in a sec."

"Oh," Matt says, reaching up to try and poke at the feedbag. It makes an empty, plasticky sound, and he wonders whether he should be relieved that this miserable experiment's over (or if he should just continue to ride the mild panic creeping up his throat at the fact that it's all in his stomach now, sitting there and bullying him, Your move now, Murdock). "Black is good, thanks."

"Gross," she says, chuckling to herself. She fixes her own coffee (cream, a tiny hit of sugar), then walks back into the living room. "Here."

She hands him a piping-hot, giant mug - it's more soup bowl than mug, and he wraps his hands around it gratefully. Running his thumb along the side, he tries to work out the logo painted on it. MOMA? He mouths the word, and it clicks in his head just at the same time as she says, "MoMA. Museum of Modern Art."

"Ah," he nods, taking a tentative sip. It tastes… dark. Sterile. He exhales in relief and pleasure. "I've never been. Looking at art isn't really my hobby, I'm sure you can imagine."

"Well, I wouldn't say that. There are all kinds of multimedia installations, like sound art - actually I think there's a Kierkegaard installation being featured right now, if you wanted to..." She trails off and clears her throat. Still, he quirks the corner of his mouth at her, touched.

"You're into art?" he asks. She nods, taking a quick sip of her coffee before setting it down and moving behind him to fiddle with the tube.

"Yeah. Anyway, that's a cool trick," she adds, changing the subject smoothly. A quick click as she unlatches the plastic connector and he's free. "Alright, so, getting this tube out should suck slightly less than getting it in, so there's that."

"Thank God," he says. He means it. Feeding that tube up his nose and down his throat ranks high on his list of most uncomfortable experiences, and he has a particularly long list. "Do you need me to do anything…?"

"Nope." She circles round to kneel next to him on the sofa. "I guess just brace yourself, this tape can be a real bitch to take off."

He raises an eyebrow at her, an attempt at conveying a gentle tone of you stitch me up without anaesthetic on the regular, but makes a good-natured show of gritting his teeth and grabbing the arm of the couch. "Go easy on me, nurse."

"Ha-ha," she singsongs, swatting him on the bicep before catching the edge of the tape with her thumbnail and yanking it off slightly harder than he suspects she would with any other patient. "Brat."

* * *

Hours later and formula's still in there: he'd made it out of Claire's apartment, down the steps and around the corner into the alley, and he'd been so ready to just be done with it. Doubled over overtop of a pile of trash, one fist pressed against the bulge of his stomach, mouth watering in sick anticipation. But he couldn't do it. This is the fucking least you could do. Let her do this one thing for you without completely ruining it. Let yourself recharge for one day.

God knows what she's managed to get into his stomach. She'd danced around the question of just how many bottles of formula she'd poured into the bag, but he suspects he's got at least four of them working his way through his system. The sheer volume of sugar alone is a shock. It makes his fingertips vibrate and his palms clam up and he hides his hands underneath the table so Foggy won't notice.

The waitress comes and Foggy sounds hesitant before he orders his usual: two eggs easy with sausage and hashbrowns, plus a side of extra-toasted toast and jam. Butter, not margarine please. Even just listening to Foggy order makes his stomach contract uneasily. He orders a coffee he has no intention of drinking and dismisses the waitress with a smile before she can ask if he'd like to order anything else.

Foggy lets out a slow breath as the waitress walks away, a grumble hiding just underneath the surface. He says, finally, "You look good."

He feels like shit. Still, he winks at Foggy behind his glasses and smirks. "Don't I always?"

"Yeah, you're dreamy. Obviously. But you look good. Better, I mean. You've got some of your colour back."

"Yeah?" Matt fidgets with his coffee cup. "I, uh…" He frowns, then decides fuck it. "I was at Claire's last night. She's helping me out with - with, y'know, the food stuff."

Food stuff. He hears Foggy's heartbeat jump at the mention - it's a phrase they've been dancing around for weeks without directly mentioning it by name and he's caught him by surprise with his bluntness.

"Oh?" Foggy sips his coffee, faux-casually. Faux-casual, for Foggy, means sipping his coffee after every fifth word to give off the impression of being blasé. Don't pay me any mind, I'm just a casual dude casually sipping his coffee like a hummingbird with anxiety. "I have a lot of questions - I'm sure you already know that. I just - can I ask questions?"

"Well." Matt spreads his fingers out on the fibreboard tabletop and chews at the inside of his cheek. "I don't know if I really have any answers. bud."

"You don't have answers, or you don't want to talk about it?" Foggy says, before his voice softens. He waves a hand in front of his face, forget it. "I mean, it's okay if you don't want to talk about it. I'm just glad you're talking to someone. Especially, y'know, a nurse-someone."

"Yeah," Matt nods. "I'm working on it."

"Good. Good." Foggy lets out a deep breath. "That's all I need to know, Matty."

They sit in silence as Foggy folds and refolds his napkin in his lap, keeping his hands busy until the waitress comes with his plates of food. He hesitates for a moment, fork and knife poised over his eggs and his stomach grumbling like a whining toddler and Matt gestures towards his plate.

"Go for it, smells good." The eggs are old and there are a few spots of mold growing on the bread, probably invisible to the eye but not small enough to be invisible to Matt's nose, and there's some residue scraped up from last-week's pork sausage mixed in with Foggy's freezer-burnt hashbrowns, but… it's nothing that'll kill him. So he does his best to ignore the chewing noises as Foggy digs in, pressing one steadying fist into his solar plexus under the table to keep his gag reflex under control and using his other hand to massage the acupressure point below his wrist, doing everything in his power to keep the nausea at bay.

This is the first semi-productive conversation they've had in weeks, God forbid he projectile vomits vanilla Boost all over the table and ruins the mood.

"Did you hear the news this morning?" Foggy asks as he chews. He's always taken Matt's blindness as an open invitation to talk as he chews and he's never realized until right this second how much he wished that wasn't the case. "They found one of Mikhail Zotov's associates - a cousin of his who worked for his development company. The details are trickling in. But apparently they found him in a construction site shot right in the back of the head, execution-style."

Fuck. "Wow," Matt says lightly. He grinds his thumbnail into his wrist, pressure-point not pulling much weight in keeping away the nausea that jumps up his throat. It's a different kind of nausea, this one. All prickly and hot and mean. "That's quite the development."

"Stone cold, huh?" Foggy takes a bite out of his toast. "Must have been a rat or something."

"Probably knew where to find Zotov, too."

"Fuck," Foggy says. "Yeah, probably. Anyway, it's a pretty good lead. The cops are probably interviewing his family as we speak. I bet they're gonna crack it open any day now."

"God willing," Matt murmurs, dragging a fingertip around the rim of his mug (even though he realizes he can smell the lipstick and nicotine-saliva residue clinging to it) and looking towards the window so Foggy doesn't catch the look on his face.

"I'm not totally naive, I know you're still following the shit out of that case. Just, are you being careful?" Foggy asks, and Matt resists the urge to turn towards his voice. "With the, uh, nighttime dangerous stuff that you know I hate? God," he adds, wiping a hand over his face, "I feel like every time we try to talk about this it's like talking about Voldemort or something. Avoiding mentioning he-who-must-not-be-named."

Matt groans. "I'm not Voldemort," he mutters.

"Well, okay, the good-guy Voldemort. You get what I'm saying."

"No, I do. Sorry," he says honestly. "I'm just a little on edge." Against his better judgement, he raises a hand from his lap so Foggy can see it vibrate.

"Jesus, dude," Foggy sighs, "no wonder you're not touching that coffee."

Matt offers a weak smile. "Totally."

"If you need to take some time off from the office -"

"No," Matt says quickly. "I don't wanna do that to you and Karen."

Foggy takes a deep breath. "Matt?" His voice is weak, careful, and he shuffles his cutlery around his plate as he chooses his words. "Can you even name any of our clients right now? Did you even know that we have clients, plural?"

His rebuttal dies in his throat, because Foggy's right: he can't name any of their clients, can't remember what cases have come through the office. He's read them over, talked to Karen about them probably, hell, he's probably signed paperwork on most of them. But his mind's blank, and no matter how hard he tries to grasp at names or details he comes up empty. Was there a Ms. Anderson? he wonders desperately. Or was it Ms. Peterson?

"At least take a week," Foggy insists. "Keep doing what you're doing with Claire because from the looks of you," he gestures a hand towards Matt's face, "whatever she's figured out, it's working. Take some you-time. I know you want to do your job and you don't want to leave us high and dry, but you're more helpful when you're healthy." He pauses. 'So get yourself healthy, okay? And know that I'm by your side on this, whenever you need me."

Matt hesitates.

"C'mon Matty, end of discussion. Now," he adds, "tell me whether or not spending the night at Claire's got you any closer to some smooching action. Cause buddy, she is a fox. I mean, when I met her she was covered up to her elbows in your blood and she had a look on her face like she wanted to murder us both, but. I could tell. Total fox."

Matt coughs a laugh and the tangle in his stomach loosens enough for him to relax in his seat, the sting of his gunshot wound only nagging a little against the press of the cheap diner vinyl. "Well," he says, spreading his hands out on the counter. "Prepare to be disappointed."


	15. Chapter 15

The food in his fridge has started to stink. Rot has spread through his vegetable crisper, up through the shelves of untouched food: carrots gone wrinkly and soft, tomatoes turned to ooze on the inside and threatening to burst at the lightest touch. All the produce he's purchased over the weeks out of a combination of wishful thinking and putting on appearances, gone bad. The smell has soaked into everything else around it, sealed containers of steamed rice and plain boiled potatoes absorbing the sweet-rotten tang of the trapped air.

Even with the refrigerator door sealed shut, the smell makes Matt ill from across the room, and his only option is to clean it out now before it gets worse. He pulls his garbage bin over to the fridge and shoves his nose into the crook of his arm in a pathetic attempt to block the smell before he throws the door open and starts scooping food into the trash as quickly as he can. Once the fridge has been gutted, he ties up the garbage bag and hauls it to the garbage chute in the hallway, the heavy-wet weight of it flopping sickly against his leg as he walks.

Once the garbage has been dealt with, he triple-washes his hands and opens all the windows before settling down in front of his laptop. Now, he can concentrate.

It's been over a month since he led the cops to Wurth's place and yet there have been no rumblings about Zotov's nouveau-riche hideout being ransacked by police. Matt's spent every evening since that night combing through the news, searching for any scrap of leaked information that might suggest that the cops are closing in on the location of the mansion, and every evening the frustration in his chest builds.

It doesn't make _sense_ : Wurth had admitted everything so readily to him that night that it seemed certain he would squeal just as quickly to the police once they applied a little pressure. (Considering the evil shit they'd found on his hard drive, he doesn't doubt that Wurth has probably picked up a couple more broken fingers in custody, courtesy of a few cops on behalf of their kids at home.)

But after days of every article being padded, regurgitated speculation, there's something new at the top of the Times' homepage and Matt leans forward to turn up the volume and replay the title, certain that he's misheard:

 **Alleged Pedophile Found Dead in Cell: No Foul Play Suspected**

No, _no_.

Matt slams his fist against the table and bites back a roar. He pages through the article faster than his screenreader can keep up, hoping that this is some mistake, that it's the wrong man, that Wurth is still alive. Snippets of monotone information inundate him until he can't process the words anymore and they turn into a meaningless blur: _heart attack_ , _attempted to destroy evidence,_ _plea deal_ , _suspected connection to kiddy ring investigation_.

Wurth was supposed to be the key: once he broke, then the case surely would, too.

But maybe that's just it? Maybe Wurth wanted to avoid accepting a plea deal. Maybe he wasn't as stupid as he seemed; maybe he knew that prison was the safest place for him, child predator or not, that keeping his mouth shut was better for him than accepting a plea deal and being out on the streets. Wurth zipped the information on Zotov up tight, so he wouldn't end up on his knees in the snow, begging for his life with a gun pressed to the back of his skull.

It would explain why every investigation that hits the news in connection to the case has been concentrated on the dozens of warehouses and apartment buildings and commercial spaces under Zotov's name that dot Manhattan, without a single whisper of the investigation spreading into Connecticut.

It's not just that nobody's found the house yet: it's that nobody knows to look for it.

* * *

They're curled up on opposite ends of the couch, listening to the TV under one of Claire's crocheted blankets from her grandmother that smells like rose soap and moth balls. It brings back a specific memory, one he'd long forgotten about but that comes back to him crisp and clear: scratchy, mismatched blankets in the convent, donated by some church group and probably crocheted by a bunch of well-meaning retirees sitting in a circle and bragging about their grandchildren.

(He wonders if he ever knew his grandparents, if he'd ever met them when he was little - he wishes he could ask his dad about them, now, about their names and their favourite foods and the sounds of their voices, because he can't even conjure up one of those half-remembered fill-in-the-blanks memories of them, the kind of images you think you remember clearly but that really you've just pieced together from the stories you've been told, over and over.)

"Can I ask you a favour?"

"Yeah," Claire says carefully, taking a sip of her tea.

The irony of the fact that he is asking her if he can ask a favour while huddled in the corner of her couch, with a tube full of protein formula snaking up his nose and down his throat, is not lost on him. "You're already doing a lot and I know I'm asking too much, but I just figured… since you gave me that list of names, I thought maybe…"

"You thought I was on board with _all of this_?" She gestures towards his bullet wound, before softening her tone. "Matt," she sighs. "Just ask _._ "

He winces as he asks her, "If I gave you a description of a house, something that could be identified through satellite imaging, would you be willing to help me find it?"

"And whose house would that be?" It's clear in her voice, the tone of resignation, that she already knows this is going to be trouble.

He takes a deep breath. "Mikhail Zotov."

"The guy from the child prostitution ring? Russian with bad teeth and an even worse haircut? The current focus of a nation-wide manhunt?" She laughs her low, _this is ridiculous_ laugh. "And you think you know where's he's hiding out."

"Yes - well, maybe?" He pauses. "He has bad teeth?"

She wiggles her feet under his legs and nods. "You know how often I forget you're blind? Yeah, he has real bad teeth - even has a gold tooth, like one of those movie mobsters. And one of those - I don't know if you'll even know what I mean - one of those terrible haircuts, where the front is just a straight line? Did you ever see the movie Dumb and Dumber as a kid? The haircut Jim Carrey's character had." She waves her hands around her head, gesturing to try and explain the shape, "All straight lines, like a terrible, greased-up helmet. But with more of an Eastern European convict vibe. He looks less like a businessman than, like, the kind of dude who has a tiger for a pet."

"I have no idea what you're talking about, but it definitely sounds terrible. Does my hair look like that?"

"God, no."

They both laugh, quietly, under their breaths. It's so late - probably four in the morning, and Matt feels a surge of guilt in his chest. He's keeping her up and she almost certainly has to work in a few hours. He starts to tell her she should go to bed, that he'll be fine, but she cuts him off: "Give me the description and I'll do my best Google-fu."

"Are you sure?" he asks, dry-mouthed. The tube at the back of his throat feels thick and his sinus aches a little and he twists his head, stretches his neck, trying to get himself into a position where it'll feel less nagging.

"I mean, I think I'm in a position to set ground rules here, right?"

He raises his eyebrows at her but waits for her to continue.

"If I find this for you," she begins, then pauses. "No, actually: while I am doing my best to find this for you, whether or not I succeed" - she chews on the inside of her cheek as she formulates the rest of her sentence - "you have to agree, for the time being, to stop going out at night and looking for trouble. Not even if you feel like you'll win the fight. Not even if you think you won't get hurt."

He shrugs at her. "Easy."

"You say that like staying out of trouble is easy for you."

He snorts a laugh. "I'm a model citizen."

"Second thing," she begins, and he begins to interject ("Hey - hey, come on!") but she holds up her hand to shush him and plows on. "If I find this information for you, you have to promise me now that you don't go anywhere near that house. I'm serious, Matt."

"Define 'near,'" he jokes, but she doesn't laugh.

"This doesn't even make sense." Claire shakes her head, "If you have info, why wouldn't you just go straight to the cops with it? Why this secretive bullshit?"

"I didn't get my info by tickling the guy into talking," Matt says flatly. "I can guarantee whatever plea deal they gave him involved him ratting out Zotov - so maybe they already have all the information I have. Plus the knowledge that the only other person who knows that very same info is the guy who broke into his home and beat the shit out of him."

"You," she sighs.

"Bingo."

She frowns, tapping her fingers against her mug. "If they have all the information you have - information that you feel is specific enough to find this place, then… wouldn't the cops have found it already?"

"Yeah," Matt sighs, rubbing at his eyes, "yeah, see, that's what I wondered, too. But it's been so long that I'm starting to think they didn't get that far with him. Before he tapped out."

"Tapped out?"

"He died in custody yesterday."

"Fuck," she murmurs.

"It was a better death than he deserved."

She shrugs noncommittally and pulls a pillow into her lap, wrapping herself around it. "Okay. So we forward this info that you have to the cops - _anonymously_ \- and then voila, they have the info we have and they can move forward with it."

"Our info is a general house description from a now-dead guy." Matt presses the base of his palms into his eye sockets. He groans as he adds, "That I got by breaking his fingers."

"Yeah, I assumed that much."

"Remove the dead guy and what do you have? A house description and no explanation of its source or validity?" He blows out a breath and drops his hands from his eyes, a low throb of pressure remaining in their absence. "They've been getting hundreds of calls a day, people thinking they saw Zotov on the street, saw him at their local deli buying a sandwich, saw him leering in the crowd at their kid's dance recital. The city's on high alert and the sheer number of reports they're sorting through…" He deflates and looks towards her, palms up. _You see where we stand, here?_

"Yeah," she trails off and chews on her lip. "Okay, say I - _we_ somehow figure it out. Find an actual address, something concrete. We report it, and you don't go anywhere fucking near that house."

"Sure," he says, nodding.

They both know it's the only thing he can say to get what he wants, that she holds all the cards moving forward and he has to find the right combination of disingenuous Choose Your Own Adventure canned responses to get to the right page. _You Did It! You Solved the Mystery of the Haunted Mine Or Whatever_. Matt holds his breath and waits for her response as she slumps forward with her elbows on her knees and digs her fingertips into her scalp, massaging slow, deliberate circles.

"It's always obvious when you're being bullshitty," she says flatly. "So you can understand why I'm not really inclined to take you on your word on this one. Don't lie to me, Matt. You've got a bullet wound in your side that's just barely started to heal, you're skin and bones. You're a mess." She counts off her conditions on her fingers: "Promise me: no getting into trouble while you're in the state you're in right now. No going after whatever's in that house. Shake on it."

He stoically offers his hand and tries to act like he means it, "Deal. Thank you."

She gives his hand one quick shake, her grip iron-firm. "Don't fucking thank me." She pauses and looks up towards his feedbag, reaching to unclip his end of the NG tube from it. "You ready for round three?"

He groans. "Not really."

"Tough," she says, patting him gently on the arm before she drags herself up off the couch and into the kitchen to grab another bottle of supplement. "You need to get up and move around at all? Or go to the bathroom?"

"I'm getting a little antsy," he admits. He flexes his fingers and stretches out his legs, feeling the stretch of muscle and ligament and the slight pop-hiss of his joints unlocking. The weight of the liquid in his stomach sloshes back and forth as he shifts, a see-saw weight in his body cavity, and he briefly entertains a strange thought: he could go to the bathroom, he could _get rid_ of the weight.

He's not physically weak yet, not really: he could keep going for weeks, probably, stomach mostly empty but his mind clear. He's been sitting on Claire's couch for hours now, thick vanilla liquid sludging its way down the line and down his throat and he figures enough calories have probably passed through him at this point, enough to help heal his wounds (he's confident he can do the rest of the work with meditation and rest), and whatever's sloshing around in his stomach right now - combined with, _God, how much more is she about to pour into his feedbag?_ \- is just extra weight.

He feels slow and heavy and he imagines, in vivid detail, unhooking his tube, quietly sneaking to the bathroom, turning on the sink to drown out the noise -

"Pick something on TV," she says from kitchen, interrupting his thoughts, and he feels suddenly embarrassed, as though she might secretly be able to read his mind. He feels his face redden as she continues, brightly: "You want something to drink?"

"Can I drink with this in?"

"Of course you can." She flicks on the kettle and tinkers around in the kitchen: popping a couple of grapes in her mouth out of the fridge, digging around a cupboard for a bag of nacho chips. She chews one, slowly, and he feels briefly pathetic at how easily she can just eat _whatever_ without having to think twice about it.

"I don't wanna tempt fate," he says weakly. "Hate to puke up all this hard-earned baby formula because something weird was in my tea."

"It's not baby formula," she scoffs, pulling open her fridge again with a rattle. "I have..." She pauses as she digs around. "Beer? That's pretty clean, right? Alcohol-sterilized, I guess."

He laughs. "Would you judge me if I said yes?"

"Nope," she says, grabbing a bottle out of the fridge. She stops awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen for a millisecond before carrying it over to him. "I was kind of tempted to toss it to you," she explains, laughing.

"I would've caught it." A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth.

"And then you would've sprayed beer foam all over my couch," she points out, holding it out to him. He accepts it gratefully. "The way I see it, a beer is great. It'll chill you out a little and it's an extra hundred or so empty calories. Bonus." She adds, "That's a twist-off, by the way."

"Bonus," he agrees weakly, twisting open the bottle. "No beer for you?"

"Tea for me," she says, heading back towards the kitchen. Her comically huge mug is filled to the brim with smoky-sweet milky tea (lapsang? he wonders) and she walks carefully back to the couch, sitting back down slowly and murmuring a quiet _goddamnit_ as she spills a little in her lap. She takes a sip before asking, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Shoot."

"How come you can go about your day with the smell of the sewer or the smell of a garbage pile or the constant exhaust fumes? Don't you get overwhelmed by that, too?"

"Yeah," Matt nods, "but it's different. I can be overwhelmed and still, you know, go about my day and push through it. Just like you can smell something terrible at the hospital and gag and soldier on. It's a whole different thing when it's _taste_ , when it's in your mouth and you can _feel_ it on your tongue…"

He senses her nodding before she clears her throat and says, "Yeah, I get it."

He takes a tentative sip of his beer: it's got a tiny hint of rot, a bitter pungent remnant from old hops, but it's not too much for him to handle. The beer is strangely comforting, even though the flavour is a small shock to his system after a week of almost nil by mouth. "Smell is just so passive in comparison, you know?"

* * *

After the first session, they'd hammered out a mutually-acceptable feeding schedule. ("They" meaning Claire - Matt's contributions to the conversation had mainly involved him crossing his arms and groaning and begrudgingly nodding in agreement.) Now, he shows up on Claire's doorstep at eight sharp every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday dressed in a hoodie and sweatpants and ready to spend the night on her couch. A floating appointment to have a tube slid down his throat would be too tempting for him to blow off, they both know that, so he let her set the rules and does his best to stick to them, even though he'd rather make a standing appointment to have his molars pulled out without anaesthetic.

Truthfully, it's not all bad. Now that Claire has taken on the responsibility of feeding him, he no longer feels any obligation to try to feed himself. In a sense, maybe the worst sense, it's freeing: he no longer has to try to force food down his throat during the day, to try and boil and scrub vegetables into submission just to feel his belly bulge uncomfortably and waves of nausea climbing up his throat. Now that eating is out of his hands, he feels the gentle nag of hunger pull at him all day and embraces it like a small, secret friend.

(A full belly doesn't make for a chaste spirit, but he's pretty sure it doesn't count when there's someone else filling his stomach for him. When she slides the tube up his nose and down his throat, though his brain is kicking and fighting, he still has to hold himself back from whispering, "Amen," for even though the process feels like torture, all heavy belly and raw throat, when she hovers over him with her sweet breath and her gentle touch it feels like she's offering him salvation. _Soul of Christ, sanctify me; body of Christ, save me; blood of Christ, inebriate me, for I am not worthy not worthy not worthy._ )

The only attempts at eating that he makes, now, are feeble and mostly for show: he'll bring a carefully washed and peeled apple to work and slowly pick at it throughout the day, because just the sight of it makes the tension in Foggy's shoulders relax and makes the tightness in his voice recede. Putting the apple slices in his mouth, chewing them thirty times apiece until the juice has been squeezed out and he's left with the dry, pulpy mush coating his tongue and sticking to his gums: it's a mechanical process, and he gains no pleasure from it. He's so far past hunger that swallowing food now feels strangely similar to eating on a full stomach - gluttonous and wasteful and shameful. But, combined with the promise that he's getting enough in his stomach outside of work, the meagre snacks are almost enough to satisfy Foggy and that makes them more than worth the extra effort of fighting against his screaming brain. 

"It's fine," he can say around a mouthful of apple every time he waves away a lunch invite, his voice lowering to a between-us whisper, "I'm going to Claire's tonight, it's okay." And Foggy, trusting that it's the truth, nods knowingly and pats him on the bicep, "Ok, bud," and that's that.

Aside from showing up to Claire's place, he's made one other rule for himself: every third time Karen or Foggy offers him food he forces himself to accept and eat in front of them. It doesn't matter if it's greasy-charred gyro or soggy diner fries or salad rolls with poorly-deveined shrimp - whatever it is, he forces himself to eat it because that's the rule. He'll swallows it down quickly, barely chewing, hunched over at his desk knowing full well that he looks like a starving man but needing to force it all down fast before his body starts to reject it. Then he'll sit at his desk squeezing his hands into fists and focusing all of his energy on controlling his gag flex, or, if the food is mostly clean, making strained small-talk for at least ten minutes to avoid arousing suspicion: each minute counted out with one ear trained on the ticking clock on the wall.

After that, after he's been a good show pony and made Foggy and Karen happy, he can slink out of the office and get rid of it.

He recognizes that these thoughts, these rules, are all completely crazy. _You're losing it, dude,_ he tells himself, shaking his head and laughing low and dark under his breath, _you're fucking losing it_. But you're not crazy if you recognize that you're crazy, right? Isn't that how that paradox works? But then, on the flipside, if you can recognize you're going crazy, you should also be able to turn away from the nonsense in your head and start scrabbling back up out of the hole you've gotten yourself into, the Prisoner turning away from the shadows and towards the blinding fire, but he's too tired to convince himself to try harder, too tired to convince himself that he needs to stop being such a fuckup.

He lays in bed at night and argues with himself, tries to reason his way out of even the most intricate, curling thought-spirals. Even when he knows a thought is a Crazy Thought, even when he catches himself laughing out loud at a particularly bizarre line of thinking, he still pinches at himself, quick nips of skin between his thumb and forefinger, following the edge of his hipbone and his bicep and his stomach. He pinches at his thin skin and feels satisfied that _Stick can't grab what he can't grab._

( _Stick is gone, Stick can't hurt you, you need to get over it get over it get over it_ )

But the dreams are getting worse, bad enough that he can't sleep at night, and he spends his days feeling like he's sleepwalking, teetering on the edge of real and not-real. More than once, he's nodded off at his desk and woken up panting, the press of phantom fingernails into his spine slowly receding as he senses Karen looking at him across the office, one hand slapped over her mouth with quiet alarm. It feels like every bite of food he chokes down immediately turns to flesh, flesh that can be gripped and bruised. Keeping himself light, slender, invisible is all he can do to try to keep the hands from creeping across his skin.

 _You're an idiot, Matt Murdock_ , he tells himself, disbelieving hollow laughter in the empty dark of his apartment. All the while his brain floats with images of cold cement walls, children screaming for help, and one small, forgotten heartbeat: alone in a room, and then not.

* * *

"Special delivery!" Foggy announces as he fumbles the door open. It hits the wall with a clang. There are heavy plastic bags in his hands and the smell hits Matt's nose almost instantly: lo mein, BBQ pork, sesame chicken, fried rice. Matt's always figured that "American-style" anything is just shorthand for "soaked in oil," and the heavy, acrid smell of old cooking oil floats through the room and chokes him. He pushes back from his desk and holds his breath, blood pounding in his ears.

His normal course of action when Foggy brings lunch back to the office, especially hot food that permeates the entire office with a blanket of difficult smells, is to escape: his phone will suddenly buzz with a phantom important call, or he'll claim to be hit with an overwhelming craving for coffee that must be satisfied right that moment. He wonders if they notice that he always brings back coffee for them but never one for himself ("Finished it already," he always explains, pulling the corner of his mouth into a 'what can you do?' grin as he places their to-go cups in front of them. Americano with skim milk for Foggy, black medium-roast for Karen.)

"I brought enough for everybody," Foggy says, and Matt feels the way he angles the words in his direction: _that means you, too._ Of course it does. For the last month, any time Foggy has brought in food there's been an implicit suggestion that some of it, all of it, is Matt's if he'll just take it. Half of Foggy's homemade sandwich, forgotten on the corner of Matt's desk at the conclusion of a conversation, a carton of washed strawberries left unintimidatingly on the conference table, a box of cookies left on the kitchenette counter that Foggy will eyeball for the entire day, keeping careful count of them to see if Matt's taken one.

"Did you remember the egg rolls?" Karen asks.

"I ordered them and paid for them but I make no guarantees as to their presence in this bag," he says, hoisting the takeout onto the conference table with a heavy thud.

"You didn't check before you left? They always forget." She walks over to help him unload the half-dozen foil trays filled with steaming, oily noodles and fried rice and battered meat. Now that they're free of the takeout bag, the smell hits Matt tenfold and one hand shoots out to grip the edge of his desk.

"Well, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt." Foggy unloads spoons and chopsticks and napkins, and Matt stays frozen in place, his body pushed away from his desk and his muscles tensed, ready to get up and make a bolt for the door before Foggy can ask him if he wants any - because it only really counts if Foggy _asks_ \- and he wracks his brain for an excuse he hasn't already used this week. Foggy looks up from the spread of food and says, gently, "Matt, there's lots here. Eat with us?"

 _No, no, no, no_. He hesitated for too long and now he's missed his chance. _Stupid_.

Foggy had brought a dozen doughnuts to the office on Monday, a celebratory treat because they'd managed to deposit a particularly unpromising client cheque without it bouncing. He'd managed to escape eating one, even though he knew from ten feet away that Foggy had specifically bought three of his favourites (glazed crullers, doughy and fresh) - he knew without a doubt that Foggy had purchased three so that, no matter what, there would be at least one waiting for Matt. _No excuses._ But he'd made one up, anyway: problem at the bank, forgot to sign an important piece of paper for the deposit, yada-yada-total-bullshit. Foggy didn't buy it, not for a second, but at least when he came back to the office, his nose ice cold from the blowing snow outside and his feet aching from trudging in circles around the neighbourhood in his dress shoes for an hour, he hadn't offered again. Tuesday, Foggy had offered him half of his reuben, which he'd waved away. "Thanks, but I gotta get through this paperwork without leaving grease prints all over it," he'd laughed, mostly convincingly. Wednesday, he'd convinced himself that Foggy sliding a takeout bag piled with croissants across the table to him hadn't _technically_ counted as an offer because it was nonverbal.

So that means he's at offer number three, technically. Four, if he's really being honest with himself.

"I'll have a bit." He forces the words out and Foggy pauses, a mouthful of fried rice hovering in the air in front of his face. He fumbles his chopsticks and nearly drops it all into his lap but manages to recover in time, catching it with his paper plate before it can hit his trousers.

"I can make you up a plate if you want?" Karen offers.

Matt doesn't mean to snap at her when he says, quickly, " _No_." He adds apologetically, "Don't worry about it, I'll be over in a second."

"Kay," she says meekly and guilt creeps through his chest. This is not the type of person he is. This is not the type of person he wants to be.

Matt unfolds his cane and stands up, approaching the food like he's entered a lion's cage. He hovers over it, teeth worrying at his bottom lip as he tries to scan the dishes for contaminants.

Weighing his options, the mixed vegetables and lemon chicken seem like the safest bets. There's a hair hiding somewhere in the vegetables, still scented with rose shampoo, and there are a few aphids stuck in the sticky lemon sauce, but these are things he can pick around. A little residue is fine, all he needs to do is swallow enough to make Foggy happy: he has at least that much self control.

Foggy's gone back to his work, hovering over his computer as he drops rice between the buttons on his keyboard. Matt notices the way he forces himself not to glance over in Matt's direction, leaning in comically close to his monitor to indicate that he's _definitely_ not paying attention to both what and how much Matt chooses to eat. In a strange way, Matt appreciates it.

Still, he hovers nervously over the food, shifting side to side and trying to work up the balls to actually make a move. God bless her, Karen notices his indecision and comes over to stand beside him. She picks a paper plate up off the desk and slides it into his hand. "Want me to walk you through the options?"

He nods quickly and smiles, thankful for the opportunity to make up for snapping at her. "Thanks, I'm starving. What have we got?"

She smiles back at him, hot blood rushing to her cheeks, before she ducks her head in embarrassment and turns towards the spread of steaming food, listing for him in intricate detail every last horrible thing.

* * *

After he got out of the hospital, Matt had been so terrified to eat, so paranoid that Stick had poisoned his food again, that he hadn't eaten for three days straight. The hunger made him feel safe and in control; eating meant putting himself at risk of Stick tricking him again. It meant ulcers and bleeding cracks in his lips and needles in his arms and a firey stomachache that lasted for days.

And if Stick beat him when he refused to participate in the tasting games he put in front of him, it was because _he_ chose the beatings over the food.

Two days in, Stick had finally conceded and left a bowl of white rice by his bed as some kind of peace offering. Matt waited for him to leave, footsteps leaving the kitchen and heading down to the training room, before rushing over to hunch over it, trying to smell and smell and smell to see if it was safe. He was so far past hungry that he didn't feel hunger pangs anymore, just a dull numbness in the pit of his stomach, but he needed to know if it was clean. It was. Still, even once he was sure, he carried the bowl of rice out to the open windowsill and left it to dry out in the sun.

It was the tiniest victory imaginable, but he had won.

That night, by the time his eyes refocused and he'd wrapped his arms around his naked body, shivering, Stick had already left. There was a new bowl of white rice on the floor beside him, steaming hot and pure, and he realized that maybe there was no winning.

* * *

The bathroom door clangs open, so loudly that Matt presses his hands over his ears reflexively, the vomit on his fingers an afterthought.

"Oh," she gasps, clapping both hands over her mouth to muffle her breathing.

Matt freezes. He's acutely aware of the heel of his dress shoe, scraping against the bottom edge of the stall door and unquestionably visible from where she's standing and he stays stock-still like a prey animal, knees aching on the bathroom floor. _If you don't move, they can't see you_.

"Karen?" he tries, hoarsely. "Is that you?" Of course it's her: hardly anyone else works in this building, never mind the fact that he can smell her shampoo and the vanilla-rose of her lip balm and last night's whiskey still in her pores, but his panicked mind is just clear enough to remember to pretend he's completely blind to her identity. "Karen?" he asks again, still frozen in place.

She feels around behind her for the door, nails scrabbling against the peeling paint, and walks out without responding. The door closes softly behind her.

Matt lets out his held breath and listens to her footsteps recede down the hall. He forces himself not to chase after her and fall on his knees, press his lips to her feet and beg her silence. She pauses as she reaches the door to their office and takes a slow, shaky breath before clearing her throat and pulling the door open. Passing Foggy's office she says, brightly, "Can you believe they forgot the egg rolls again?"

He stops typing and laughs, saying, "Honestly, I think they're going for some kind of record. I'm afraid to complain and break their streak." and she laughs, too, the panicked rhythm of her heart clashing with the forced warmth in her voice. Then she goes back to her desk and they both fall silent: just the click-click of Foggy's keyboard and the scratch of Karen's pen over the white noise of lunchtime traffic outside.

Matt reaches out to flush the toilet then rocks backwards onto his heels to stand up straight, unlocking the stall door and creeping out, hunched over and red-faced like a kid who's been caught sneaking back in after curfew. _You fucked up. You fucked up you fucked up you_ fucked up _._

He'd been too focused on the burn in his throat and the blood pounding in his ears and the pressure behind his eyes to notice her approach. _This is what's going to get you killed_ , he can remember Stick saying, circling him with slow, mocking steps as he lay curled-up and shocked, taken by surprise by a hard crack to the skull. _You're too cocky, you never pay enough attention. One of these days, you're going to pay dearly for it._ But others have already paid dearly for it: if not for his failures, there would be no manhunt. He tries to drag himself away from these thoughts but it's hard not to circle round and round the truth: if he had done things properly, there wouldn't be flowers laid daily at the vigil that remains down the street, candles lit nightly in memory of a kid who never had a chance at a better life.

A bead of blood creeps its way out of his left nostril, spiderwebbing through the chapped skin of his lips before the taste hits his tongue, hot and anemic. He grabs a handful of paper towel and presses it to the blood, leaning against the wall to steady himself. The nosebleeds have been happening more often lately. He's not entirely sure if it's because he's purging more often, or because of the intensity of the vomiting; his windows at work are short and precious and he can't waste time - forcing out food in the office bathroom before Foggy or Karen come to look for him, choking out a stomach full of guiltily-swallowed lunch into the trash pile in the alley.

The flow finally stops after a minute, once the paper towel is patchy with his blood and his fingertips are sticky with it. Matt grabs a few more sheets of paper towel to wrap around the used, sodden bunch of it before tossing it away and turning on the tap full blast to rinse the blood and bathroom-residue from his hands. The water is so hot he has to bite his lip to bear it but he forces himself to wash his hands slowly, the sting briefly replacing all other thoughts in his brain until the pain becomes so overwhelming that he's forced to yank his hands out and gasp for breath, his hands throbbing.

Maybe he can leave for the day and claim - what, exactly? Disappearing from the office and feigning sickness or an emergency (what emergency? he has no family except for Foggy), would be the most obvious admission that Karen walked in on him making himself throw up. There's nothing else he can do except walk back into the office like nothing's wrong.

Halfway back to the office, a terrible thought occurs to him: is he supposed to acknowledge what's just happened? If she had really just walked in on him, choking up some tainted lemon chicken or whatever, the natural thing to do would be to bring it up and shake his head and laugh it off. Right? _Fuck, fuck_. He lets himself into the office, stepping through the doorway expectantly, waiting for Karen to greet him and ask him if he's okay, if he's sick. The ball is in her court, he's just waiting for the serve. He walks past her desk, his ears pricked expectantly and his cane waving slowly, carefully in front of him, but she doesn't even glance up at him. She just continues to flip through the stack of invoices on her desk, ignoring him, because she already knows the truth.

Of course she does, he realizes belatedly, sliding into his chair and folding his cane with shaky fingers. Shame floods his face, stinging and hot, and he catches her glancing up at him, her hands hovering frozen over her work and her breath held. _Of course she does._


	16. Chapter 16

The wound in his side smarts, but it's not enough to drown out the buzz in his brain and his muscles. It's that old familiar 'I need to beat the shit out of someone who deserves it' energy and, despite only half-meaning it at the time, he _does_ want to make good on his promise to Claire not to go looking for trouble. But he's coming apart at the seams with jittery energy and he needs to let it out in a controlled environment before he bursts, so he pulls on his sneakers and sweatpants and heads out into the cold.

With his hoodie pulled up to protect his ears from the sleet, Matt makes his way to Fogwell's with his head down and his blinders on. He focuses on the sound of packed snow under his rubber soles, on the crunch it makes as it works itself into the tread of his sneakers, to keep himself from getting distracted by a scream or a cry for help half a mile away.

The tiny pain of his thumbnail pressed hard into the side of his index finger helps, too.

It's only ten, but the gym is empty by the time he arrives and he nearly collapses from relief. Tonight, he needs to let loose. He doesn't have the patience or energy to play blind for an audience.

He leaves the lights off and tosses his jacket onto the floor before stepping up to the heavy bag, the tips of his fingers caressing its drying, cracked vinyl like an old lover. He probably should take the time to wrap his hands before starting, but he left home in such a hurry that it hadn't even occurred to him to bring gauze. The risk of injury is higher without wraps - almost guaranteed - but there's no chance in hell that he's trudging all the way back home just to save himself from a fractured finger or a sprained wrist. He came to the gym knowing there was a promise of a little pain, anyway.

The first couple of hits jolt through his torso hard enough to make him gasp and clasp one hand over the exit wound in his hip, pressing his palm into the heat of it through the thin fabric of his t-shirt. There's no bandage over it anymore: Claire took his stitches out a while ago and told him that it looked good, that it's closed up nicely. But that can't be true. She must be wrong.

If it were healed, it wouldn't still be hissing at him all day and night, screaming at him when he tries to sleep on his back or stomach and forcing him to switch position twenty times a night just to relieve the pressure on its fire-hot puckered edges.

He breathes through the pain with his eyes clenched shut and focuses on cycling his breaths: in through his nose, out through his mouth. The pain recedes to a dull throb after a dozen breaths and he straightens out, squares back up. The second punch feels surer, the pain in his hip spreading out into a manageable warmth through his side.

He works the heavy bag until his knuckles feel arthritic and bruised and his elbows throb, and still he keeps going, sucking in breaths between his clenched teeth and bracing himself against the reverberations of his strikes. The goal isn't just to find relief from the frustrated energy pent up inside him: he needs to exhaust himself, needs to burn his muscles out so that sleep will be inevitable tonight. So that not even the dreams will be enough to keep him awake.

He hasn't managed more than two continuous hours of sleep over the last three nights and it's starting to fuck with him. He keeps catching himself zoning out in the middle of sentences, losing the plot when Foggy gives him basic information about a client, forgetting to use his cane when moving around the office. He's earned a few confused glances from Karen after forgetting she's there and reaching for his briefcase without remembering to play blind, assuredly wrapping his fingers around the handle without feeling for it first.

A hard thump of his fist against the bag makes his wrist crackle like lightning and he cries out, wrapping a protective hand around his wrist and pulling it against his chest.

Doubled over, sweat beads off the tip of his nose and drips to the floor and he feels like a winded racehorse. He can smell the blood beginning to bead where his knuckle's torn open against the bag. The room is a few degrees warmer than when he started, pure radiation from his body heat, and he peels off his shirt and sways a little on his feet, his hands reaching out to cling to the heavy bag for support.

The room swims around him, his ears pounding like he's underwater, and even though he wants to keep going, to keep working away until he's so tired he can't keep himself upright, he knows it's time to stop.

* * *

There are fewer people at the memorial tonight. Not just because it's freezing outside, the wind whipping the snow into flurries in the little neighbourhood park. The numbers have been dwindling for a long time - the manhunt has been losing steam in the media, and even dead kids become old news after a while. Still, there are candles surrounding the small table that holds Colin's photograph, the flames barely staying lit within their cheap plastic holders. The regulars nod at him as he approaches.

"Here." An older woman appears beside him, wrapped up in layers of wool scarves. She smells like home cooking and animal fur, and she smiles as she touches his elbow. "May I?"

He nods, and she takes his hand to wrap his fingers around the base of a lit candle.

"How's your grandson?" he asks, looping the strap of his cane around his wrist so that he can wrap both hands around the sides of the candleholder, trying to catch some of the warmth.

"Oh," she says brightly, patting him on the shoulder. "He's doing well in school, has really taken to math. I hear he's got a girlfriend now."

He laughs quietly. "Do eight-year-olds have girlfriends these days?"

"When they're half as handsome as our Theo, they do."

"Touché."

"So." He can feel her gaze sliding over his body, senses the way she fidgets with her scarves as she asks, "How've you been?"

"Busy," he says. It's been a week since he's come by the memorial. Up until tonight, he hasn't been able to get into the headspace for it and it's loomed over him like a specter.

"Lucky lady?"

"Definitely not," Matt says, shaking his head.

"Ah," she nods sagely. "A lucky gentleman, then? I'm hip."

He coughs a laugh. "Let's just say I'm married to my work and leave it at that."

"Sure, sure," she pats him on the shoulder again and chuckles.

A lull takes over and they stand, shivering with their shoulders bumping together and chins tucked into their coats to hide from the bitter-cold wind, in front of the memorial.

His lips begin to move in silence, stumbling over the words that he draws up from half-forgotten memory: _the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them._ He coughs, shakes his head. That's not right - how does it go? _They seemed in the eyes of the foolish to be dead, their passing away thought to be an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction._ The candle shakes in his fingers, and he lets go to wipe a hand under his nose. _But they are in peace_. _God tried them and found them worthy of himself_. Suddenly, as if she's only just noticed, she says, "Your hands, Matt," and reaches to touch his bloody knuckles.

He steps backwards, dodging her and stuffing one torn-up hand into his pocket. "I slipped on the ice on my way over, I should really head home," he says quickly. He holds his candle out towards her and adds apologetically, "Can you put this with the rest?"

She looks back up towards his face and tilts her head at him. "Of course. You go home and stay warm." Taking the candle from his hands, she adds, "Take care of yourself."

"Can do, Sarah. I'll see you soon."

He flips his hoodie back up over his ears and ducks his head against the cold, offering her a wave as he leaves. Even though she knows he can't see it, she still waves back at him as he goes.

* * *

When he gets home, he meditates for longer than he's managed for weeks. Still, it's like there's a blockage in his brain, his energy not flowing quite right, like a storm drain all gunked up with leaves and dirt and dead squirrels. He tries to focus harder and jam it all free with the end of a metaphysical broom but it just stays stuck.

He holds his hands over his solar plexus but his fingertips are too ice-cold for him to concentrate on pulling the energy through his system and he makes a frustrated noise. An itch tickles at his scalp and he forces himself to stay still, distracting himself with the circulation of his breath: nose-throat-lungs-throat-mouth, letting the hot air flow back out past his lips and dissipate into the room before inhaling again. Once he gets himself himself under control and his brain stays quiet long enough that he loses track of time, he begins to slide his hands over his body to clear the harsh energy that's built up all over him.

Cold palms over his knees, down his throat, over sharp elbows. He wipes and wipes but still it sticks to him and he can't get clean. It's layered like years of weathered patina on a statue and he thinks, maybe there's no shine underneath after all.

Maybe he's just grit and tarnish all the way through.

He gives up, shoves himself to his feet with a huff and heads towards the bathroom instead, pulling his still-sweaty gym clothes off and tossing them to the floor as he goes. When meditation isn't pulling its weight, hot water usually works wonders to wash away the palm-prints burned into his skin.

* * *

Laying in bed with his sheets wrapped around his freezing-cold toes and a pillow shoved between his knees like a pregnant woman to keep his spine aligned and to keep pressure off his bullet wound, he reaches out to drag one finger across the edge of his bedside table. There's a small stash of benzos hidden at the back of it, a few dozen pills ferreted away in an old mint tin. Valium, Xanax, Klonopin, all easily identified by their smell and a brush of his thumb against their imprints.

They're all small tokens he's saved from the pockets of vindictive dealers and abusive pimps, and he figures that maybe all those years in the convent, with nothing except the clothes on his back and his own imagination to keep him company, have left him with a post-war kind of need to save and store-away anything that might become useful or necessary or hard-to-find later, for when he _really_ needs it. He's got sixty-odd little options knocking around inside an Altoids tin, and even if he never opts to use them they bring him comfort.

It's not often that he dips into his collection - hell, even 'not often' makes it sound more frequent than it really is, because the pills are only for especially rare occasions. He'd been forced to rely on them a few times in college, when the dreams had snuck back into his life and he hadn't been able to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time for a weeks. At the end of his rope, he'd taken a Valium here and there to get himself through the semester without failing his exams due to exhaustion. He took a few more, later, when Landman and Zack had them working 70-hour weeks and the dreams had come back with such a vengeance he'd been afraid to even close his eyes at his desk. The pills let him slip into a deep, dark black, velvety and indistinct and far, far away from anything that might reach out and grab him.

The dreams are getting worse, now, taking on an edge and a cruelty that leaves him scrambling awake, one hand digging for the knife shoved between his mattress and the wall before he can register that he's completely alone, the attack already dissipating like a fog. The pain has been keeping him up at night, too: not enough food, or not enough sleep - either way, it means his wounds are healing like shit. He doesn't tell Claire how much pain he's in. Every time she looks at the wound, he doesn't sense any worry in her posture or her heartrate. It must not _look_ half as bad as it feels. But he doesn't want to tell her that the pain is intense, that truthfully it's starting to worry him, because there's a good chance the glowing ache in his side - just like the dreams, just like the _hands_ \- is all in his head.

It could just be psychosomatic pain clawing at him, like Thomas the Apostle is wrist-deep in his gut and is rooting around for the truth.

( _"Jesus, Foggy. Can we just please stop tying everything back to my so-called Catholic guilt?"_ )

He's barely slept the last three nights thanks to the dreams, and the pain, and the fact that his brain's been running in circles wondering when the other shoe will drop because Karen hasn't said a word to him since... _since what happened._ As far as he can tell, she hasn't said anything to Foggy either. He would've knocked his door down by now if she had.

Anyway - it was a misunderstanding, nothing more. At this point maybe it's best to just ignore it and let it be swept under the rug, chalked up to food poisoning or a hangover. To do anything more would be some kind of admission of guilt and he has nothing to admit.

Because it was a misunderstanding.

It was a misunderstanding and he's tired, so fucking tired.

Matt slides open the bedside drawer and snakes his hand deep into the top compartment, finding the cold edges of the tin. He moves to pull it out but something small tumbles from where it was balanced on top of the lid and he feels around to find it. As soon as his fingers close around the tiny balloon, his heart jumps with recognition: he'd nearly forgotten about the heroin. He slowly drags his thumb across it, feels where the drag of the rubber is interrupted by the smear of blood.

He's never kept street drugs before, and the reminder that it's been sitting tucked away beside his head every night making his stomach flip over. The vinegary smell, too, makes his throat tighten and Colin's parents' ( _parents_ , his tongue shapes the word inside his gritted teeth) cries come back to him: _We needed the money._ _How were we supposed to know? He's a good boy, but we needed the money_.

He places the balloon back on top of the lid and slides the Altoids tin deep into the drawer and back out of sight and, for the first time in weeks, he doesn't dream about hands.

He dreams about a small body,

floating all alone in cold, cold water,

surrounded by city lights.

* * *

 _(A/N: Thank you for waiting so long, I've missed all of you and we're gonna see this thing through til the end 3)_


End file.
